


Fire Candy

by BlackCatula



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Age Difference, Arson, Candy Puns, Capitalism, F/F, Female Protagonist, Gen, May/December Relationship, Modern Era, Mystery, Novella, Philosophy, Superheroes, White Collar Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:23:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4729193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCatula/pseuds/BlackCatula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niki Bracket owns her own private candy business that she operates out of an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town. She's a fast talker, no time for idle chit-chat! After all, who's got time to waste on "being polite" when you've got a corporate capitalist machine to undermine with your outlandish and surprisingly fair business practices? Ain't nobody gonna stand in her way! Especially not with that urban legend weirdo decked out in candy-colored armor and lugging around a big-ass lollipop hammer that wanders around from time to time doling out some rather unusually violent justice from time to...you know what, forget I mentioned that. Don't worry about her.</p><p>Oh, but maybe DO worry about that shady old lady wandering around setting things on fire. She's probably a villain. Probably. Fire is bad, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alright, Start Talkin

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for NaNoWriMo 2014! It's not quite 50,000 words, but it's pretty close, and I'm overall pretty happy with the way it turned out. The idea was literally inspired by plucking random words out of a hat and applying my love of action cartoons and my disdain for corporate capitalism! The more ya know!

At that moment, all around, in every direction, everything was alive and very hot. Old wood snapped and cracked with a life it hadn't known in decades. The air itself was brimming with a radiant, searing energy, and to breathe it in at this moment would be to inhale the pungent, overpowering smell of absolute life.

This awesome phenomenon is actually not as rare an occurrence as any common person might guess it is. Scholars agree that it is very easy to reproduce, will sustain itself for great periods of time especially if left entirely alone, and is highly visible, for miles even, to anyone with functional eyeballs attached to a functional brain.

The only explanation for a lack of reference to such a grand explosion of light and life among popular society is people's general disdain toward things like arson.

A lone human figure stood silhouetted against the lively flames as they burned their way up the walls of the building. No one saw her, no one knew who she was. Most importantly though, no one could have discerned that this person was indeed thinking about the fire in front of them in that very same artistic way, in all its glorious paradox. She stood in absolute wonder of the magic of the flame, and thought about the people who might never be able understand its true beauty.

"Heathens…" she muttered, slipping into the surrounding shadows and even further out of sight.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Alright, start talking!" a distinctly soprano voice barked as the front doors flew open, admitting a sharply-dressed girl no older than twenty years. "The only things I know right now are media rumors, and you know how much I hate a sugar coating on anything that isn't edible. I need you to start filling my plate with some hard truth! Go!"

"Good morning Miss Niki," came the reply from behind the counter, in a strikingly contrasted calm and much lower voice. "I'll skip the pleasant formalities and bring you up to speed immediately. To summarize only the facts, the Butterscotch Bureau has burned to the ground and the fire was contained around 5:00 AM this morning."

"What happened, were we attacked?" Niki asked, yanking the peppermint-rimmed shades from her face and stuffing them in the breast pocket of her caramel vest.

"The forensics team arrived only seventeen minutes ago and has not had sufficient time to make a conclusion," her secretary said, not moving her face away from her computer monitor.

"They just got here?! What the hell have they been doing all morning?"

"Sleeping, likely," came the unfazed response.

Niki growled and slammed her hands on the counter, her candy bracelet making a loud clacking noise. "Okay then, smarty pants, what about my employees? Are they going to be able to work today?"

"Provided there will be no additional structural damage today, yes."

"Okay...so we're not completely gummed up, that's a positive." Niki took a breath of relief and removed herself from the counter, striding purposefully across the room over to her own desk. "We can build on that, I guess...unless there's any other bad news to report?"

"Nothing else significant to report right now," she replied, voice still calm but fingers typing rapidly.

"...right now?"

"The forensics report will most likely yield more bad news."

"See? That's what I love about you, Minnie," Niki said with just a hint of a grin as she rummaged in the drawer for a chocolate bar. "You never add artificial sweetener. You know how to give me exactly what I want. That's why you're my secretary!"

"I love you too, Miss Niki."

"No time for mushy stuff though," she replied, mouth full of chocolate. "No time for anything, matter of fact. Now that I know things are in your entirely capable hands, I need to skittle off and take the entire day with me, due to critical business reasons. Tell me how I can do that, and I swear I'll kiss you full on the mouth."

"HR might consider that sexual misconduct," Minnie said, still unmoved.

"I AM the HR department, you nerd."

"Then I suppose we have nothing to worry about."

Niki tossed the candy wrapper in the trash bin beneath her desk and immediately pulled out another bar. "Alright, let's clear my schedule. Hit me."

"Very well," Minnie said, spinning her chair to face her. She pulled her phone from the front pocket of her creamy white vest and quickly pulled up the schedule. "Your first appointment will no doubt be the press van driving up to the front door this very moment. You'll be expected to answer questions and/or make a statement."

"My statement is that there was a fire and we're investigating it," Niki said with a dismissive hand wave. "The more time I spend making statements, the more unsolved this case will remain. End quote, cut and print. Next."

"Kristen Chapman, logistics manager, wants to meet with you at 10:00 to discuss 'fireproofing options' for the other buildings, and to discuss fire safety training in case it happens again."

"You tell her it's not going to happen again," she said flatly. "Besides, she's already got enough on her plate managing those logistics as it is. We don't have resources right this flipping moment to implement new procedures, nor do we have spare cash flow to account for 'fireproofing' materials, whatever that means."

"It means stabilizing or protecting a structure against--"

"Yeah yeah, I KNOW. Next!"

"You have an appointment to get your hair done today during lunch."

"Cancel it," she said, making a face. "This place is a giant dust bowl anyway, it'll just get nasty again in no time. Oh, but order me more of these custom peppermint bands and clips, will you? They're damn cute!"

"Note added. Speaking of dust bowls, there have been multiple requests for a hearing on replacing the air conditioning system in the non-burned warehouses."

"Is that what we're calling them now?" Niki said, rolling her eyes. "Look, you'll have to convince these people that we're in a crisis situation, and whatever money they thought we had for things like this is for sure all tied up now. We're all needed elsewhere if we expect this cake to keep baking, and if this company can't keep churning out product per demand, there won't be any NEED to fix the air conditioning 'cause we'll all be living in cardboard boxes!"

"That's an extreme and presumptuous response, but I'll relay what you mean by it."

"Good girl."

"And last but not least," Minnie said, with a twitch of her eyebrow, "Brian Cartwright, lead sales director, is once again asking you to join his quarterly sales strategy conference dinner."

"Ugh, again?" Niki swallowed and reached for yet another chocolate bar. "Look, I love what the guy does for this business, but I DO NOT have time nor patience for his weird, sporty 'sales playbook' nonsense. I don't even know where he gets this stuff."

"I'll mark you as 'Not Attending', then?" Minnie asked, finger awaiting her response.

Niki paused, drumming her fingers on the armrest of her chair. "You know what, I do feel a little bad for always turning the guy down completely. Let him have his conference, and send them a bottle of gummy bear wine, or whatever alcoholic candy concoction is popular with them right now. Just make sure they know it's from me."

"I'll tell them to drink in your honor, since you're still not old enough to legally consume it, anyway."

"Oh shut it," Niki grumbled, looking out the window. "I'm old enough to run this company, that's all that really matters anyway."

"I meant no disrespect, Miss Niki," Minnie added, thumbs busy adding notes to her phone. "You know I don't take for granted how much work you've put into us. Your dedication even at such a young age amazes me."

Niki turned back to face her, watching her silently. Minnie had always been the ideal secretary, not only for her unmatched multitasking abilities and incredibly quick response time, but because she never asked to be anything more than a secretary. Despite easily being more than double Niki's age, Minnie never showed jealousy or resentment, and kept her personal life far estranged from the office. There was no one Niki would have rather had sitting in that chair, scheduling her life.

"Miss Niki?"

She dropped back into reality and shook her head. "Right then. Nothing more to worry about?"

"That was all you had scheduled for today. I've updated your calendar, sent out email correspondence, forwarded your phone to voicemail, and generally taken complete and absolute care of your office life."

"You're worth a hundred grand, Minnie!" Niki said with a bright smile as she stood up and straightened the lapel of her jacket. "Now, if you will most kindly excuse me, I've got some very important dates to attend to for the rest of the day."

"I'll make no attempt to stop you, Miss Niki," she said, rising to her feet. "But, as a courtesy, would you humor me and indulge my natural curiosity about your intentions?"

Niki moved in closer, checking over her shoulder for the presence of any invisible guests, then said in a hushed voice, "Listen, I don't need a forensics team to know that this fire was no accident."

"You sound quite sure of that," Minnie replied, not needing to lower her own voice.

Tilting her head back to talk upwards into Minnie's ear, Niki continued. "Do you really think that an entire operation revolving around a new flavor of candy literally going up in smoke just days before its reveal is any kind of coincidence?"

"Arson is a very serious crime, if it's what you're suggesting."

Niki nodded, taking hold of Minnie's wrist and bringing her in even closer. "I'd be a damned fool not to suspect that someone wants us out of the whole candy business, for good. And they're clearly not afraid of getting their hands dirty."

"I can think of one major competing business in the area," Minnie said, trying hard not to agree or disagree, even though she had already more or less pledged allegiance to one side. "If they intend to narrow the playing field, arson seems to be a very effective way of shutting you down."

"Exactly," Niki said, again checking for invisible eavesdroppers. "So I'm just going to spend the day poking around in their pantry, see if I can find out what they're cooking with."

"I'm certain, then, that you have a plan more organized than marching up and asking them face-to-face if they are responsible for this."

"Heh, you got that right," said Niki, raising an eyebrow. "Let's just say I know someone who CAN do that, though, and I intend to employ their services for the purpose of negotiating information…".

"BUT, you never heard that from me!" she continued, back to her normal, much louder tone. She released Minnie and stepped toward the front door, brushing the crumbs from her skirt. "For all intents and purposes, Minnie, all you know about my whereabouts for today are 'she's out for a stress breaker', and that's all you have to tell anyone who asks!"

"Consider me honor-bound to do nothing less," Minnie said with a nod.

"You're an absolute peach, Minnie, and a cobbler to boot," she added with a smile. She returned the shades to their rightful place on her head, stuck a lollipop in her mouth, and marched back toward the door. "You're in full command while I'm gone! Kisses!"

When the door closed behind her, and she was sure that Niki was out of sight, Minnie cleared her throat and returned to her seat. She opened a drawer, pulled out a small ledger, added two marks to it, then put it right back and carried on with her daily secretarial duties. Or, more accurately, keeping the entire company from falling into chaos.


	2. Delightful Candy-Colored Nutjob

All around the city, the air had been growing steadily thicker with heat and dust, albeit slowly enough that most people hadn't quite noticed yet. Summer was definitely looming, not so much in an ominous way, but if you actually turned your head to look at it, you'd probably suspect it was stalking you.

People didn't really bother looking, though. By the time the summer months had rolled around, they were busily avoiding the outdoor air altogether, preferring the control and comfort of an all-too-marvelous thing they had invented called "air conditioning". And while purists would chastise them for not breathing Mother Nature's own handmade atmosphere, they just stuck out their tongues at the naysayers and were happier with it that way.

Pushing Mother Nature away seemed to have been a long-standing goal for the citizens of this particular pocket of the world, anyway. When the sunlight glared off the tall red rocks, sunglasses and stylish shades went on sale. When new layers of dust emerged on everything seemingly overnight, people bought bigger fans to blow it away.

But the one trick up Mother Nature's sleeve that they simply could not fight was a fire. All it took in this land of intense heat and unchecked dry brush was a single errant spark to easily transform any field of browning vegetation into a raging ocean of angry flames. And, aside from using the city's notably limited and precious water supply, there was just no viable way to protect against a fire.

Why people even bothered to live in an environment so hostile mostly remained a mystery, but business seemed to thrive well enough, as long as money was being made off it, and that seemed to be all that really, truly mattered to them.

The old woman grunted at the thought, shouldered her heavy backpack, and began hiking down to the nearest gas station to spend the money she'd most definitely earned.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Midmorning sunlight glinting off the neon swirl design of her armor, the daring defender dashed forward across the rooftops. Each jump was carefully calculated, precisely positioned, and then turbulently thrusted forward by a dangerously inaccurate explosive charge emanating from the heel of her boot. And she never had to worry about whether or not she frightened shop owners below, due either to lack of concern for citizens or perhaps just a short attention span.

She had a name, but she was known by another one. Any urban legend vigilante worth their sugar had a sort of codename that immortalized their actions and beliefs. In her case, it had been bestowed upon her by virtue of the inimitably unique, massive and delicious weapon strapped to her back.

The people of her city who had caught glimpses of her in action called her Lollyhamma (with some dispute attributed to the "proper" pronunciation of the word "hammer"). This was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a directly reference to the giant lollipop she had been seen repeatedly bashing into a man's face in one particularly famous incident.

Presently though, she was not pummeling anyone with sugary treats; she was only blast-dashing her way through the upper atmosphere of downtown, briefly lighting on each slab of concrete rooftop just long enough to breathe in before breathing back out as she took off again. Step by explosive step, she crossed the city in minutes, heading straight out into the barren outskirts, where the dry, crispy land and the dilapidated warehouses did away with whatever bustle and liveliness the city had to offer.

She honed in on a particular old ramshackle cluster of buildings, set apart from the other bits of civilization against a tall red mesa, typically considered the end of the town line. Out here there were only old warehouses that probably hadn't seen heyday in probably fifty years, yet still they stood nonetheless, currently home to a very new upstart of a company. A mismatched, much newer sign out front read "Knickknack Snacks".

And there, at the forefront of the whole scene, was a huge, blackened crater.

Lollyhamma came to a hard stop in the dirt out in front of the mess, casting up a thick cloud of dust in her wake. A small team of professional investigators gathered around said crater all turned their heads in unison to gawk at her.

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" a chubby man in an expensive suit bellowed.

"I'm the same thing you are," Lolly replied, lifting the visor from her sleek helmet. "An investigator. What are we looking at here?"

The man raised an eyebrow and looked her over from toe to head. "This ain't a costume ball, kiddo. We've got some important digging to do here, gotta poke around in case there's evidence of this being something of a non-accidental nature. So yeah, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave."

"Not leaving until you've told me what you know," she said firmly, stepping into the circle of ruin. "Pretty sure I already know what's going on as it is."

"Get out of the crime scene!" he shouted, pulling her out. "You could be destroying evidence, for god's sake! I'm sure I don't need to tell you that's a serious criminal offense!"

"Arson's also a criminal offense," Lolly snapped, yanking his hand off her arm. "And if that's what this is, then you're gonna need me to be your criminal DEFENSE, in case the culprit strikes again. Now tell me what your special investigative eyes have found so far, so I don't have to do your job for you."

"Look, we don't even know for sure it's arson yet," he grumbled, turning to his accomplices for assistance. "Somebody wanna help me get her out of here already?"

Not a single one of the other three investigators looked up from the phones they had very suddenly pulled out of their pockets. One was even whistling to himself, to complete the picture.

"What's the matter with you all?" the head demanded. "Get this...this DELIGHTFUL candy-colored nutjob out of our sanctioned work zone!"

Finally, one of the bolder investigators looked up, eyes darting nervously between him and her. "...boss, maybe you don't know this, since you don't keep up on pop culture and stuff, but...I'm pretty sure that's Lollyhamma."

"Lali-ho, what?"

"Yeah, Lollyhamma's what people have been calling me," she said, stepping up behind the head. "Wanna find out why?"

"Not really," he said, waving her off. "I'd rather you got the hell out of here, this is no place for you geek-ass kids who think you're superheroes or whatever. Will one of you PLEASE take her away?"

"I'm no superhero," she continued, growing noticeably impatient. "And clearly you're no investigator. Not one worth a shit, anyway."

"Oh that's it then," he said with a snort. "You're just going to insult me? That'll DEFINITELY make this job go faster, thanks for the help there."

His face molded into an arrogant frown and he spoke down the bridge of his nose at her. "Listen little girly, I've been working as an investigator for almost twenty years now, probably longer than you've been alive. I'm not gonna put up with any bullshit from some kid in a plastic train wreck of a costume like that one."

"Train wreck?" Lolly said, a wicked sneer developing on her face. "You wanna find out if all this is plastic or not?"

Before he could answer what she intended as a rhetorical question anyway, in one fluid motion, she snatched the giant lollipop from its holster on her back and brandished it around in a circle or two before adopting a defensive stance.

The head blinked, ran his eyes long the length of it, and squinted at her, unsure how to respond.

"Do you know ANYTHING about the wreckage I'm standing in, or not?" she repeated, her pink gauntlet tightly closing around the handle.

"That's not information I can just release to the public," he replied, a bit haughtier than he needed to be. "...especially not to some candy-costumed freak with a giant sucker."

She licked her lips.

"I mean, what the hell is this anyway, are we in some kind of comic book? Who the hell are you, even?"

She dug her heels into the ground.

"And seriously, is nobody going to make a move against her? What are you all afraid of?"

She leapt.

Before the head could even process what was happening, he was struck full-force by the blunt end of the giant lollipop and toppled to the ground. Everyone took a step back, watching in giddy anticipation as the urban legend herself knelt down beside him and took hold of his expensive business jacket.

He stared back in absolute shock, eyes darting between her stonefaced scowl, pastel-pink gauntlets, and peppermint swirl body armor. She was as comically dressed as any nutty fantasy villain, by all means a caricature who shouldn't logically exist, and yet here she was, assaulting his face with a massive confectionery warhammer.

"ghk" he choked.

She hoisted him up, bringing his face to hers. She must have stood a whole head shorter than he did, and beneath the fancy armor she certainly didn't seem the bodybuilding type, but her strength was certainly in no short supply. She clenched him in an iron grip and said, in a grim voice reserved for gritty anti-heroes, "There was a crime committed here. Don't let the lack of evidence fool you. This wasn't an accident."

He finally managed to spit words back. "...how the hell would you know that?"

She glared at him, lowering the visor back into place. "You just focus on doing the paperwork, like a good little businessman. Follow your precious system. I'll worry about real things like evidence, and proof...and justice."

With that, she dropped him unceremoniously to the ground, turned back toward the alluring glimmer of the city, and rocket jumped her way off into the distance.

After taking a moment to reinitialize with his surroundings, and to confirm that, yes, he hadn't been drugged just now, the head investigator shook his head and stumbled back to his feet. He shot each and every member of his team a certain accusatory glance, then straightened his tie and marched into his car without another word. His team watched as he silently drove away, leaving them to sort out the remaining work out amongst themselves.

Later, they all agreed it had been a very productive morning.


	3. Red Velvet

Minnie's world was very small. Not just because she was a small person, and absolutely not because she was narrow-minded or limited in skill. She simply lived in a very compact frame of mind, operating on efficiency and simplicity. She had long ago decided that secretary was her ideal job, a life of simplifying schedules and organizing messages, conducting everything into a rhythm and a flow.

The irony of her given workplace environment was not lost on her, either. For all her desire to be sleek and effective, the building was in pretty bad disrepair. Chunks of plaster had fallen out of the walls, leaving cracks and scars. Uneven tables were held up by pieces of cardboard beneath the feet. One particularly finicky electrical outlet was covered by strips of bright blue tape with "DO NOT USE" written in double-bold underlined marker. And yet, in the middle of her creaky, yellowing desk sat a super-slim, top-of-the-line laptop, and behind that, a very modern and very european ergonomic chair.

And, at the heart of it all, Minnie herself; a slim, silver-haired woman of quite a few years now, with skin that had advanced from natural tan to spotted rust over those years. That, coupled with her affinity for formal wear in various shades of white and maroon, had earned her the unofficial nickname "Red Velvet". If asked, she would tell you that her boss's affinity for sweet things probably also had a hand in that.

Keeping up with a boss who was probably one third her age was quite a feat, too. For many people Minnie's age, learning new technology became a massive hurdle, and being able to condense all of that knowledge into a single well-oiled machine would have been nothing short of a miracle. But that was Minnie's secret power. She had long ago given up trying to focus on living in a fine-tuned routine, and now lived her life completely in the moment, moving almost automatically from task to task as they came up. In everything she did, she was was efficient. Succinct. Precise.

And presently her precision and patience were being tested.

"Niki is currently not anywhere on the premises nor reachable by any known electronic device, Brian."

"That's...really inconvenient," the well-groomed, well-dressed, well-smelling man sighed. "I'm about to close a big deal here, and I kind of need her approval to sign off on it."

"Then, as you said, it's really inconvenient," Minnie confirmed, trying to keep her eyes pointed at her laptop.

Brian stuffed his hands into the pockets of his navy business jacket, looked at the floor, and gave a quiet, breathy laugh. Minnie recognized this as his signature 'that is not at all the response I wanted to hear but I must remain calm and professional and slightly condescending about it' reaction.

"Aww, that is not at all the response I wanted to hear!" he said, half-jokingly. "But alright, let's build on that answer."

"You can't build a house on a weak foundation, Brian."

"Yes, okay, but…" Brian said, holding up his index fingers. "What if we widen the net here, try a little thinking outside the box? Ya with me?"

"That's precisely the point, Brian," Minnie continued, in a voice calm enough to anchor a ship. "Niki is already outside the box, and we don't have the ability to confront her about that."

He dropped the act. "There's really no way at all to contact her?"

"I'm under strict orders not to disturb her during her stress breaker. I'll certainly relay your message when I see her again, tomorrow."

"...promise?" he asked with yet another sigh.

She looked up from her laptop sharply and caught him dead in the eye with a look that suggested "concentrated laser beam". The calmer she appeared, the more intensely her gaze burned.

"...alright, then," Brian said, turning his head away slightly to avoid being pierced clean through. "I suppose I can try postponing the deal by another day. Who knows, perhaps this customer is the reasonable type!"

"Yes, perhaps this is the sort of person who has the capacity to understand that sometimes things are, in fact, beyond their control."

"Ha, yeah…" he laughed, weakly. He shook his head as he walked away, as if he'd just been defeated in combat. "I guess I'll just go make myself a fourth cup of coffee or something...".

"Have a good day, Brian."

She let out a tiny sigh of relief the moment the door closed behind him. She could feel the flow of harmonic energy returning as though a great weight had been lifted off her cosmic self, and she was finally once again able to--

"Hey, you know what, I just thought of something else…" Brian said, poking his head back through the doorway, and again damming up the flow of spiritual energy.

"Brian," she said in a voice so serene it could very well melt a glacier, "I am quite busy this morning attending to the aftermath of a very serious fire incident involving severe property damage, increased insurance rates, and irritable old men in fancy suits insisting they were attacked by the vengeful spirit of the candy reserves that were slaughtered in this very incident. Is what you have to tell her so important that you need me to step away from my desk, get in my car, and track down Niki Bracket in person, just to hear her say the word 'okay' as a proof of authorization that you can do exactly what your job entails anyway?"

Brian remained silent for just a moment more, having kept his mouth open and finger raised this whole time, waiting for an opening to continue interjecting what he had already begun saying. "Why don't YOU just authorize me to do it?"

Minnie hesitated. This was not a situation that had ever come up in the three years she'd been working this job, and granting herself authority to grant someone else authority seemed like a task worthy of internal debate and weight of consequences. She allowed herself to pause and do just that, and at last came to an informed decision after nearly an entire second's worth of thought.

"Fine. You are authorized to make the sale, on the grounds that you have proven to be competent at the job designated to you by our superior herself."

"Really?" Brian asked in surprise. He had expected more resistance. "...well, alright then! Perfect! I'm gonna go close that sale right now! This is gonna be the big one, you'll see! Thanks again, you won't be sorry!"

She didn't respond, just silently resumed her work as he marched happily back off to his office. Efficiency and form had once again reclaimed her attention. Somewhere deep inside, the tiniest voice in the farthest back of her mind should have been questioning her decision, but Minnie had mastered the art of tuning it out, and head absolutely nothing instead.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Another contract? So near the last one?" she asked.

"Re-reading the words on the page won't make them change their meaning," the mysterious but keenly-dressed figure said, arms open. "We are requesting an encore performance."

"Not my place to question the motive, but I don't like the mode," she continued, stirring the ashes at the bottom of the pit. She took another bite of her chili dog and frowned. "I can't be expected to cultivate a beautiful conflagration with everyone watching in plain sight."

"Why not?" the figure asked.

"Would you ask a pregnant woman to give birth on a stage?" she said. "No, that is disrespectful to the life she carries and to the woman she is. No one strikes a match in the daytime. It must begin beneath the blanket of darkness, so at its zenith the candle will shine its brightest."

She finished her meal with a satisfied belch, and looked away into the sky. Her contractor shook their head and again held out the piece of paper. She wrinkled her nose at the thought.

The sun was riding high in the center of the sky now, chasing away all of the shadows. There would still be time left to mull it over.

"Fine," she said somewhat begrudgingly, holding out her hand. "Let me see it and absorb it."

The contractor smiled and scribbled an indecipherable name at the bottom of contract before handing it over to her. She snatched it away angrily and stuffed it in the pants pocket of her baggy jumpsuit.

"You say I must compromise religion, all for your money," she said, spitting on the ground. "It's every disgrace I hate in my soul. Even you are there, I hate you."

Expecting a response, she turned around to see that the contractor had disappeared. She shook her head, mumbling about wishing she had their powers of invisibility as she packed up her gas canister, tightly closed the valve on her backpack, and set off to change locations once again.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"You're gonna pay for that!" the man shouted angrily, pointing to the glass that had shattered and scattered across the floor. "I just had those windows cleaned today, for god's sake!"

"Not important," Lollyhamma said with a wave of her hand. "Costumed crusaders don't clean up collateral carnage."

"Alliteration," he said with a nasty sneer. "You're ridiculous. You really are every bit as idiotic as the comic book world you stepped out of. What the hell do you want, anyway?"

Lolly strode forward into the spacious, elegant office, bringing herself up into the man's personal bubble. He was short, but of a medium build, dressed in a light gray vest and long-sleeved business shirt, with the complexion of a Brit on his first vacation in Texas.

She tried to ignore the lavishness of his cerulean carpets as she flexed her fingers within their respective power gauntlets. "Dandy Candy Corp...and you said alliteration was ridiculous."

"It is," the Dandy Candy man insisted, dragging himself back to his huge semicircle desk. "Rhymes are what's in these days. Kids love rhymes, adults love rhymes. Surely even you and your ilk know this, hmm? Choco Rocks, Double Bubble, Knickknack Snackerjacks, or whatever they're called?"

"Snacker Jackets," Lolly explained, trying not to lose her edge. "They're candy coatings you put over frozen treats, like tiny jackets. Get your head in the game."

"See?" he said with a condescing chuckle. "Only a complete candy NERD would know something like that. Your brand loyalty's showing, kid."

"Brand loyalty is for people with no sense of justice," she chided, reaching back for her preferred method of dispensing what she called justice. "Now, you're going to tell me what you know about the fire."

"Fire?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and reaching up to stroke his chin. "What, the one over at Knickknack? Heard about it just this morning."

"That's because it happened just this morning."

"Makes sense, then, eh?" he said with a smirk.

It's like he doesn't even care, she noted. No, more than that. He doesn't feel any remorse over it. He doesn't show a single shred of empathy, he almost makes a point of not caring. Maybe if I give the boy a lollipop, it might help to sway that...

"I guess it is a shame for them," Dandy admitted, eyeing the hammer as he reached toward the phone on his desk. "Then again, those old buildings aren't really equipped to handle something as unpredictable as fire, right? Poor little Bracket couldn't seem to afford basic fireproofing, it was a hazard waiting to happen."

Lolly tightened her grip and licked her lips, the taste of peppermint lip gloss still fresh. "Hazard my ass. Fires don't just start themselves, Dandy."

"Hey now, no language in my office," he scolded, pointing a finger at her. "Especially not from such a young lady, that's so vulgar."

"Fuck you," she replied, eyes locked on his. She could feel her teeth scraping together. She wanted to suck on something sweet to help quell the desire for violence.

He frowned and held up that same finger as he punched a few keys on the phone. "Hey Lorna, it's Dan. Would you mind getting security up here to my office. I have an uninvited guest up here who is making rude comments and seems to be making threats against my mental and physical--GYAK!!"

A small trickle of blood seeped out on to the carpet, leaving awful dark smears where the hammer had broken the skin. Before he had a chance to complain about the stains, he found himself pressed hard against the desk, hammer positioned at a precarious point located somewhere between his knees. He gasped and struggled to regain his grip on the situation.

"Dan?" Lolly asked disapprovingly as she looked at the engraved nameplate on the edge of the desk. "Your actual name is Dan D? And you named your company 'Dandy Candy', after your own name? That's the corniest thing I've heard all week."

"Shut up," Dan D muttered, briefly considering a move to break loose, but deciding against it.

"I'm not gonna shut up, Dandy," she intoned, pulling him so close that his chin was pressed against her helmet. "And you're gonna listen closely to every word I say. Now you'd stand to do pretty well for yourself if fires like that just kept mysteriously happening to your old competitor, wouldn't you?"

"Put me down, I didn't set that fire!" he shouted, pushing against her with his legs.

"Of course you didn't," she said, pressing harder, bending him over the desk. "Not personally, anyway. But I'm betting you know who did."

"Why would you think that?" he choked out.

"Because Dan," she pressed, teeth clenched tightly. "You're a shark. The only thing you care about is the number you get at the end of the day when you tally up all the sales your company has made. And if there were anything you could do to make that number bigger, you can damn well bet you'd do it. And in my book, that includes taking out your competition."

Dandy shook his head, holding back a chuckle of disbelief. "You're deluded. You think you can just blast your way into my office, smash my face, and tell me I'm liable to be a money-grubbing criminal just because I'm financially successful?"

Before she could launch into the passionate, justice-laden rant she'd already mentally written up just for the occasion, the big door at the other end of the office opened wide, inviting two intimidating, mustached men inside. Either one was carrying a leather-bound nightstick, despite the daylight sun pouring in through the broken window.

Lolly growled and released Dan, shoving herself away from the desk. "I suppose we'll finish this another time then, Dandy."

He scrambled to his feet and brushed off his suit. "Yes, I think we most certainly will! In court! When I sue your sugar-coated ass for assaulting me in my own office!"

"Why don't you KISS my sugar-coated ass?" she said, shouldering her hammer and returning to the broken window. "I'm gonna find out who set fire to Knickknack, and the beating I just gave your face will pale in comparison to what I'll do to them…".

Tenderly dabbing at his head with a hand towel, Dandy again shook his head. "Just what are you trying to achieve, anyway? What do you get out of playing vigilante hero for some cocky upstart candy business headed by a frigging child?"

"Not your business," she said, flatly.

He snorted. "I guess not. Doesn't matter anyway, this little incident is gonna set her so far back she'll never recover."

Lolly glared back at him over her shoulder, but didn't respond.

"And frankly," he added, narrowing his eyes, "If this drops her business right out of the running, then maybe I won't have to lie awake at night, scheming up evil diabolical ways to bankrupt her myself. So, to answer your question, yes, I suppose I would have a lot to gain from these unconfirmed acts of arson…".

"...or accidental fire hazards, whichever they may turn out to be," he added hastily. 

There it is, she said to herself. That's all I needed.

He finally sat down in his chair and kept the towel to his head. "So yeah, here's hoping she does go under, and you along with her."

With a loud huff, Lollyhamma raised one hand in a familiar, rude gesture, then blast-jumped herself out the window, leaping away onto the neighboring rooftops and into the distance of the bright, midday sun.

She knew she could've easily taken the security squad, especially given the unfair advantage of her suit, but she was afraid that if she did too much damage, she would attract the police as a result, and they might start taking her seriously as a threat. Police involvement was the last thing she needed right now.

She decidedly kept to the shadows for the rest of the day.


	4. Let's Talk Numbers

"You won first prize? Honey, that's so great!"

A young Niki Bracket beamed with pride as she extended the plate to her father. "Would you like one of my AWARD-WINNING cherry brownies, dad?"

He chuckled and tousled her hair, plucking a brownie from the plate. She giggled and swatted his hand away, taking one for herself.

"Oh wow, that's....that's really delicious!" her father said, genuinely impressed. "These are incredible!"

"I know, right?" she said, mouth full. "I knew chocolate and cherries were made for each other!"

"No I mean, these are like, sell-worthy!" he continued, looking it over. "You should think about making lots of these and selling them, for actual money!"

"You think people would buy them?" she asked, munching curiously and reaching for another.

"I'D buy them!"

"Yeah but you don't count," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're dad, you HAVE to buy them!"

"I do not!" he protested playfully. "Show me where in my official Dad Contract where it says I have to buy brownies if they're made by my own daughter!"

Niki laughed and stuffed another in her mouth.

"But really though," he said, pointing to the plate. "These are the type of brownies I'd be willing to pay for. Delicious, quality brownies. And if I'D pay money for them, then I'm sure other people would too."

She thought about this a bit more solemnly for a moment as she chewed her own delicious confection. It certainly would be nice to have a little money in her pocket, if only to buy her own ingredients instead of risking her parents scolding her for using all the scratch around the house. She said so out loud.

"Hmm, that's also a good point," he noted, pulling the lever on his reclining chair and laying back. "If you sold brownies and they made you some money, maybe we wouldn't have to keep having conversations about giving you an allowance…".

"Daaaaad," she said, elbowing him.

"I'm just sayin', I'm just sayin'…" he said, closing his eyes and folding his hands. "Maybe some day you'll own your own little candy shop, buying and selling, learning all about the value of a dollar and all that...".

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Good morning, Miss Niki," came the familiar, unfailingly serene voice of her secretary, on cue with the opening of the front door, as always. "Welcome back."

"Thanks Red Velvet," Niki said, hanging her jacket on the back of her chair. "Miss me?"

"Yesterday was indeed quite lonely without you," Minnie replied. "Though not for a lack of human interaction."

"Not surprised," Niki said, ignoring the flashing red light on her phone as she pulled up her laptop. "You probably had more work to do in one day than most do in a whole week. You need a take five?"

"I'll be fine, but thank you for caring."

"Don't mention it. Now, gimme the cream filling, what'd I miss?"

Minnie stopped typing and spun her chair stopping precisely to face Niki directly, and began reciting from her phone. "First, according to the investigation team, the official determined cause of yesterday's fire remains 'unknown'. In their own words, 'we cannot find evidence of arson, so we will assume the cause is natural', end quote."

"Bullshit," Niki grumbled, already digging for the first chocolate bar of the day. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, they should know that by now. Those investigators must have been quacks...or whatchamacallit for fake-ass investigators."

"Entirely possible," Minnie agreed. "Perhaps their minds were still asleep and not entirely functional due to being called in so early in the morning."

"Nuh uh, that's giving 'em too much credit," she said, rolling her eyes. "They were all incompetent morons. What else ya got?"

"We received a number of condolences from other local companies and well-wishers via social media and direct emails. Everyone seems quite saddened to hear about your losses, though no one has offered to assist."

"OUR losses," Niki corrected her, taking another bite. "Everyone working at this company has just as much at stake as I do. If this fire is the thing that takes us down, we're all out of a job."

"Well put, Miss Niki."

"Tell me…" she said, pausing for a moment, head resting in her hand. "...is Dandy Candy Corp one of the companies who sent condolences?"

Minnie frowned as she checked. "...no, I'm not seeing an official condolence from them...but wait, here's an interesting post on their feed. They seem to be, by odd coincidence, having a sale on all spicy or otherwise 'hot' products, including Scorchers and Incendi-Minis. That's certainly an unfortunate PR disaster waiting to happen."

Niki's hand automatically balled into a fist. "Figures. Leave it to Dandy to show up a day late with Starbucks and kick me in the balls while I'm down."

"Shall I send a response?"

"Don't flatter him," she answered, dropping her fist to the desk and automatically snatching another chocolate bar from her drawer. "We may be a meager and humble little business, but that doesn't mean we have to be polite and formal all the time."

"Noted, we will be rudely silent instead."

Niki couldn't hold back a thin smile. Sometimes microaggressions against people you hated were simply more therapeutic than they had any right to be.

"The last item of noteworthy importance you missed yesterday refers to your favorite person in the company and mine."

"You mean you?" Niki said with a cocky grin.

"Your flattery will be the death of me, Miss Niki," Minnie replied with an exaggerated clutch of her chest. "But alas, the person I am referring to is none other than Brian Cartwright."

"Of course," she answered with a sigh of disappointment. "What's the little nerd done now?"

"Yesterday he informed me that in order to close a very large sale, he needed approval directly from you," Minnie explained, straightening her posture subconsciously. "Per your explicit instructions, I kept him out of your fantastic hair and duly authorized him to close the sale himself, on your behalf."

"Oh-ho, so big boy scored us a massive deal, did he?" Niki said with a relieved grin. "Perfect timing, we need that money like a cupcake needs frosting!"

"Another very apt sugary metaphor."

"Is he in today? I wanna congratulate the bastard, mano a wo-mano!"

"Miss Niki, 'mano a mano' means 'hand to hand', and typically refers to combat situations."

"Oh is that right? Well...guess that joke kinda sucked then!"

"On the contrary. I'm laughing at you right now. On the inside, that is."

"...Minnie, you're the caramel center in my chocolate bar, I swear to god."

"That sounds compellingly sexual."

"You're welcome!"

Niki reached over and jabbed a series of keys on her desk phone. The line rang only once, then was replaced by a frail but easily excitable voice.

"Hello, this is Brian."

"Brian, Niki!" Niki said, mouth still full of chocolate. "Heard you made a hell of a sale while I was out yesterday!"

"Oh! Yes, I certainly did!" he said, clearly pleased with himself.

"Well scoot your fine self on into my office, let's talk about it!"

"Sure! Yeah, sure! I'll be right in!"

Within moments, he burst through the office door, inasmuch as someone can burst politely and professionally.

"Brian!" Niki said, scraping the plastic wrappers into her trash bin. "Man of the hour, get on in here, have a seat and let's chat!"

He pulled up a chair opposite Niki, and nearly fell over when the chair leaned to one side. In all of an instant, Minnie quickly appeared, jammed a chunk of cardboard beneath the chair's leg, and just as quickly returned to her desk, to distract herself in work.

"So," Niki said, lightly smacking the table. "Tell me about your big important sale!"

"Ahaha," Brian chuckled. "Really, what's there to say? I've had this customer in my back pocket for a long time now, and he's been waiting for an opportunity to pull the trigger for months now. So, when the opportunity showed up yesterday, he came a-calling and I helped incentivize the deal with a little sweet talk, and next thing you know, kerblam! He's in! Victory dance, haha!"

Niki stared back at him with a bemused smile plastered on her face. He was telling her the good parts, that much was obvious, but he seemed to be avoiding the specifics. His smile certainly appeared genuine, but the same can be said of every smile a shark has. Perhaps he was just being his usual, shy self.

"Well I sure am glad we have you on the team then, Brian!" she said, after what amounted to maybe two seconds of thought. "Looking forward to your report!"

"Haha, I'm sure you are," he replied, fiddling with the button on his drab, gray business vest. "I did want to add something, though...".

There it was.

"This is probably the biggest sale I've ever made working under this company," he explained, using hand motions for emphasis. "...and...I'd like to take this opportunity to make use of your 'open-door policy', so to speak, about...a possible merit increase?"

Ahhh...

"A merit increase, eh?" Niki raised an eyebrow. "You want to be rewarded for doing an extra special good job? That's what you're asking, am I right?"

"Er...yes?"

She paused for a moment, then pulled out another candy bar.

"Brian, do you know what I founded this company on?"

He shifted his eyes from side to side before answering, "...uh, candy?"

"HA! Candy, yes, of course, that's kind of an important aspect of the company!" She stood up and continued munching. "But no, what I'm talking about, Brian, is the ideal behind Knickknack Snacks. The reason I do what I do. Do you remember what that is?"

"....umm?"

"I run a pretty even business," she said, bringing her voice down to much graver tones and putting an arm around his neck as she finished the chocolate. "The thing that sets this company apart from others is how fair I play when it comes to the real people who work for me. I hire anyone who can do the job until they can't anymore, and I pay people a fair, flat wage. Those are the facts, they can't be disputed!"

Brian blinked and shook his head. "Well, yes, I mean, I know that. I accepted the job because the pay seemed pretty fair compared to the workload, but…".

"But what, Brian?" Niki asked, sharpening her tongue a bit. "What's got you down about the way I run this show?"

"I…I just--".

"You just wanted a little gratification for a day of work that was a little harder than usual?" She automatically began digging in her pocket for another piece of candy.

"That's basically it, yes…".

"That may sound fair, on paper," Niki said, not finding anything. She could feel her muscles tensing up as she continued. "But let's be honest here. Just because your work was harder today doesn't mean it's going to stay that hard tomorrow. So why should you get an increase for a tough job today when you'll have an easy job next week?"

Brian frowned. "That's...taking it quite out of context, not quite what I meant to say--".

"Alright Brian, enough," Niki growled, clenching and unclenching her fists. "Listen, how much money do you make working at this job?"

He gently slipped his way out of her grip, straightening up. "I...I make the same wage I've been making for the past two years, since you hired me. I make a cold $15 per hour."

"Exactly," she replied. "And I realize that other companies pay their sales managers a lot more than that, comparatively speaking. But this is not a big company, Brian. We can't afford to be as freewheeling with our income as the big ones can. We're operating out of a decrepit warehouse in a forsaken desert, we have huge competitors who are doing their best to not only out-sell us, but smash us into bits in the process, and we just suffered a devastating chance for growth, which your incredible sale is going to help us make up for."

"Oh...is that why you can't give me a merit increase yet?" he asked, plainly.

"Have you been listening to me at all?!" she shouted. "Brian, you make fifteen dollars an hour. Ask me how much I, your CEO and company owner, make!"

She tapped her foot impatiently, a terrifying scowl crossing her face. It didn't even occur to her how unusual the scene must have looked from Brian's point of view, where a young girl half his age was explaining why she wasn't bumping up his allowance. She was simply too angry now to focus on anything other than what she had to say next.

God, I could use a candy bar right now...

Finally, Brian responded. "...how much do you--".

"I make fifteen goddamn dollars an hour, Brian!" she said with a final stamp of her foot. "So does Minnie. So does Clarence over in accounting. And Amanda in IT. Everyone in the whole damn company makes exactly the same hourly wage! It's almost like I planned it that way!"

Brian blinked and looked down at the floor, unsure where else to train his eyes for the time being. He sorely regretted ever stepping into her office now.

"I guess you must not have remembered that," Niki said, finally calming back down. "Well now you do. That's one of the reasons I run such a tight clock, Brian. No money wasted on crazy excesses like bonuses and incentives and commissions. You get a flat fee for doing a flat job, and the flat money we save goes into keeping this company out of the flat bottom. You understand now?"

"Yes, I...I've got it now," he stammered.

"Good," Niki said, leaning against her desk as her wandering fingers finally found yet another candy bar. "Now, then. Let's back up and talk a little more about your sale."


	5. Corporate Sharkism

"Have you reached a decision, then?" the contractor asked in a low voice, keeping their head turned away as they stepped into the shade of the stone outcropping.

"Feh," she grumbled, not getting up. "I'll do it, but only the money is tight. Write it down in your journal though, I'm not happy about it."

"Not important," the contractor said, extending a black-gloved hand toward her. "Have you signed the contract?"

She plucked the paper and a pen from her belt and scribbled her name along the marked line at the bottom beside the contractor's, muttering to herself. "There, I have agreed to your atrocities, and pledged to perform them as you are willing to pay for."

"Very good," the contractor said, looking over the paper before handing it back to her. "I have born witness to your pledge. You may destroy the contract now."

In one swift motion, the woman flicked open her lighter and lit the contract on fire from the top. She watched with no small degree of satisfaction as the fire slowly consumed its way down the page, feeding and gaining its own fully-realized life. Unfortunately, it was still too bright outside for the flickering light to make the shadows dance.

"I will expect payment without hesitation after the hand of damage is dealt," she finally said, dropping the blackened page to the ground, where it shattered into tiny ashen pieces.

"Of course," the contractor said, somewhat taken aback. "Do you not trust us?"

"No."

They gave a chuckle as they straightened their teal jacket. "I suppose that's fair enough. Why trust the cackling figure in a business suit when all they do is pay you for the loathsome work you agree to do for them?"

"You are wearing no different than full prison attire," she replied, cracking her old, worn knuckles. "Your job is built on what someone tells you to do, even when your own religion forbids it. My job is mine because the work is what I believe in. My soul lives precisely for the work."

The contractor sighed and pushed the hair from their face. "You're talking in riddles again, old woman. Please just do the job we've commissioned you for, and we will pay you, as we have before."

She grunted and turned away, striding back into the dust and heat. "Be right back."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"You did WHAT?!" she shouted, louder than she had meant to, even though she had meant to shout quite loudly.

Brian cringed and threw his hands up defensively. "Wh...I, I sold the butterscotch recipe! For quite a hefty sum of money!"

"WHY?!" Niki screamed, beating her fists against the desk. "Why would you sell my private recipe?! And to whom?! How, even?!"

"I-I sold the recipe because we need the money, Niki!" he sputtered. "You even just said it yourself! We're tight on money, and this buyer was willing to pay through the nose to get his hands on that recipe!"

"Of course he was!" she snapped, palming her forehead. "That's called selling trade secrets! You literally just sold my own trade secrets out from under my nose! Why the FUCK would you do this to me, Brian?!"

"I just told you, I just told you," he said, trying with some degree of difficulty to calm himself down, in hopes of getting Niki to follow his example. "Remember? I told you, it made us quite a huge bundle, right now, in the critical moment, in our time of need. We're going to USE that money!"

Niki inhaled and exhaled sharply, fingers flexing as her nostrils flared. "This is not okay, Brian. This is not good!"

"I'll explain a little deeper, then," Brian said, slowly bringing himself down step by step to normal tones of voice. "I've had a certain caller who kept pestering me about selling that recipe, offering some pretty fat stacks of cash in exchange. Call him an ace up my sleeve if you like. I just needed to wait for the right opportunity, when he was willing to pay more than ever, so that when I pulled the trigger, the gain would far outweigh the damages, right?"

He watched as Niki munched furiously on a chocolate-covered peanut butter bar, her expression not lightening up. He licked his lips nervously and swallowed before continuing.

"Yesterday was the absolute right time to do it. We had just suffered a huge loss and obviously needed to recoup a lot of money to pay for the damages and the loss of stock. And since it was the butterscotch production facility that got burned down, it meant we would have to push back our scheduled production on that new recipe. For a chance to call dibs on a new candy recipe months before it goes to production, the client was willing to almost DOUBLE their price!"

Niki was glaring at him now, still not speaking nor flinching. She seemed to be cleaning her teeth with her tongue. Her silence was almost deafening now, and Brian noticed several other things had gone silent as well. The air conditioner was no longer humming and he couldn't hear the tapping of keys coming from Minnie's desk. He wanted to look away, but Niki's cold eyes had locked his own into place and he was afraid that if he pulled away now, she would probably leap for his throat. He shivered and continued, his tone slipping down even farther, heading beyond 'calm' and almost into 'seductive whisper' territory.

"Niki, I sold the recipe because WE can't use it right now...but we CAN use that incoming money to repair and sustain ourselves! As a salesperson, you have to understand that! Please know that I did this not for some ulterior selfish reason, but for the good of the company! Please?"

With one final deep breath, Niki finally blinked, and spoke in a low, restrained snarl. "So, you had a reason after all. You were just looking out for the good of the herd. Chopping off a finger to save the hand. Is that correct?"

"Yes, exactly," Brian said, relieved. "All I meant was to give the company a crutch to balance on, in this extremely difficult time for us."

"And you did it out of the logic of love, without any focus on personal gain, right?"

"Um...yes?" he said, head slightly cocked. "Logic of....yeah, that sounds about right."

"Then why," she started, standing up to push her face closer to his, "Did you ask for a raise?"

"Well, uh…I..." he stammered, feelings of security crashing to the floor again, "That was just...you know what, forget it, it's clearly not the right time--".

"There IS no right time, Brian!" she shouted, standing up to full height again. "I just explained to you how this company works. We manage because we all make the same wage at the same time, selling what I have personally approved us to sell, when and ONLY when I approve of it!"

She began walking around her desk in a circle. "I know for a fact I explained all of this to you back when I first hired you, Brian. I give all of my employees quite a firm run-down about what it means to work under me. And you know what? A lot of them SCOFFED at me for it! Said I was too young to know what I was doing. Said I was too green, too naive, too optimistic. Said I'd never survive in the corporate world with all the sharks."

She stopped directly behind his chair, placing her hands on the back of it. "But you know what, Brian? To date, I have proved every single one of their money-grubbing asses wrong. I've been beating the odds into submission with my butter-fingered fists. I'm successful. I'm resourceful. I'm a goddamn tour-de-force in the ever-changing confectionary business! I have defied every expectation made against me by those very same sharks, all without having to become one myself."

"Brian," she brought her voice to a low, threatening hum that brought the hairs on the back of his neck to attention. "Do you know what I've gotten especially good at while defending myself against the constant bloody onslaught of corporate sharkism?"

He raised an eyebrow and shook his head expectantly.

Niki paused a moment longer than was necessary and very suddenly shouted, "I've gotten pretty damn good at spotting a shark when I see one!"

She spun the chair around and pushed the protesting Brian to his feet. "So I want you to go! I want you to get out! Out of this building, out of this company, and stay the hell out of Knickknack Snacks if you know what's good for you!"

"You're...you're firing me?"

"Damn right I am, you snake!" she screamed, shoving him forward with her foot. "Out!"

"Really," he said, with his trademark breathy laugh of disbelief. "You're actually going to FIRE me over this?"

"What's the matter, did I make you deaf when I shouted at you earlier? Want me to shout at you some more so you can hear me now?"

"...I can't believe this," he continued incredulously, chuckling a bit as he shook his head. "You know, you're making a huge mistake here. You won't last without a sales manager, and I've spent the last two years working that sales team into what they are. You take me out now, at this critical point in the game, the whole thing's gonna fall apart. Mark my words!"

"Firing you isn't a huge mistake, Brian," Niki replied coldly. "Hiring you was."

Brian frowned and shot her a scolding glance. He seemed to take a few moments to process his thought before delivering it. "You know what, if I'm technically fired now, I think I'm going to just speak freely and tell you that you're setting yourself up for destruction here."

She closed her mouth and decided to let him carry on, her stonefaced glare like a gargoyle with a thousand-year grudge.

"You think you've got everything all figured out," he continued, in the most condescending, parental voice he could muster. "You think that because you've got these little ideas about morals and how to work 'against the rules', your business is bound to succeed. You're gonna stick to your little dream and prove us all wrong by forcing it to work your way and nobody else's. You think you're gonna outshine us all in the game of life, because you've just got it all figured out."

He stood up straight. "I may be a so-called corporate shark, but I've got one thing you don't have, and that's experience."

She didn't respond, though her hands had once again formed clenched fists.

"You're cocky and you're stubborn," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Just like any teenager would be. You purposefully ignore my years of experience doing MY job, because they don't line up with your ivory tower fantasy that you think is gonna work just because you can force it to. Trust me, selling your recipe was the right move to make, and by firing me, you're gonna be flying blind right into the storm to come."

She knew she didn't have any candy in her pockets this time. Her hands were visibly shaking now, and her breath had gotten much heavier. If he didn't stop talking...  
"I guess all I have left to say," he said with a flourish of his hands, "Is that I think you're a naive child, and you're going to regret this little tantrum. You'll never amount to anything in the business world until you learn how to stop acting like a little bitch."

The moment the disdainful word left his mouth, Niki's fist reared back and connected with his jaw, catching him off guard and throwing him back. She followed up with a sharp knee thrust into his stomach, then jammed her elbow into the center of his back, dropping him to the floor. She only stopped because Minnie had quickly stepped in and grabbed her from behind in a tight armlock.

Brian coughed and sputtered on the floor for a few moments, then slowly pulled himself up. "...what...the hell…".

"I think your physical safety would be far better preserved if you left the building immediately, Brian," Minnie warned, struggling to hold Niki back.

He reached up and gingerly wiped the blood trickling from his mouth. "You...I can't believe you just...oh-ho, I'm taking this to COURT now!"

"Good!" Niki screamed, squirming against Minnie's iron grip. "Why don't you get yourself a nice shark of a lawyer, go and live among your own kind for a change!"

Brian carefully stumbled his way back to his feet and gave Niki a sour parting glance. She hissed at him.

"Good riddance," he said, spitting blood on the floor. With that, he turned and limped out the front door and out of sight.

A few silent moments later, as her breath slowly returned to normal, Minnie released her employer and took a step back. Niki stood still, trying to clear away the red fog of violence from the edges of her field of vision.

On cue, the phone rang.

"Minnie," she said, in a firm, commanding voice.

"Yes, Miss Niki?"

"I think," she said, brushing off the sleeves of her shirt, "I should turn what's left of today into Stress Breaker Part Two."

"I concur. Let your cake settle before you try frosting it," Minnie said, dutifully grabbing the jacket from the back of Niki's chair and draping it over her shoulders.

A tiny phantom of a smile cracked the corner of her mouth. "You always know exactly what to say, Minnie. Always…".

"I've trained extensively on the subject."

"Sometimes," she added, looking over her shoulder, "I could just kiss you, I swear. You're the marshmallow that holds this s'more together. I honestly don't know where I'd be without you...".

"Then it's a good thing I refuse to leave your side, isn't it, Miss Niki?"

She let herself laugh, then buttoned her jacket and strode over to the door. "Alright then, you know the drill! I'm gonna go channel this pent-up rage into something destructively constructive, whatever that means. Keep this place on a low boil until I get back!"

Minnie smiled politely and returned to her desk. As soon as the door had again closed, she let herself exhale, glad that her own transgression had remained unnoticed. She made a mental note never to authorize another employee like that again.

After another moment, she reached into her drawer, pulled out her private ledger and added another mark to it.


	6. Fumigation

They were shaped like muffins. They smelled hot and fresh like muffins. There were crumbs beneath them, and they had no frosting or paper wrappers like cupcakes. Most tellingly of all, they were being sold at a school-sponsored bake sale fundraiser, for about the same price as a professional bakery might sell a muffin for.

But unlike any muffins she'd ever seen, they were a bright, radioactive teal color. She pointed this out aloud.

"Very astute of you to notice," the student on the other side of the table said with a half-smile pasted on her face. "But let me assure you, they're entirely edible, one hundred percent safe and factually delicious!"

"But WHAT are they?" the woman asked, lifting her dollar store, pink-framed shades.

"As you pointed out," Courtney continued, gesturing to the allegedly nuclear pastries, "They're muffins."

"But…" the woman said, uncomfortably tugging her bright magenta, off-the-shoulder crop top back into place over, ironically, her own muffin top, "...they're bright blue. What's up with that?"

"Blue raspberry," Courtney replied. "They're made by adding powdered drink mix into the batter, so the blue raspberry flavor soaks right into the pastry."

"Ohhh…." the suburban white mom said, clearly impressed. "How creative! So they're basically just blue razz muffs, is that what you're sayin'?"

"That's indeed what I'm sayin'," Courtney nodded, fixing her ponytail. "The bread has a blue raspberry flavor, and contains a light smattering of cranberries and walnuts."

The mom frowned. "Oh, these have nuts? Too bad, I'm allergic...I was really hoping to try one though, that sounds really nifty!"

"We do also offer nutless ones!" Courtney said, pointing to one such muffin and trying to ignore the oncoming stream of nut jokes lining up in her head. "Our resident baker thought it wouldn't be fair to offer a flavor without an option for allergic folks."

"Resident baker?" she said, mildly disappointed. "You mean you aren't even the one who made these?"

"No ma'am," Courtney replied. "The muffins, the cookies, the signage, the materials, this is all her work, not mine. I'm just here to help her make the sales."

"Oh, I see...well, go ahead wrap me up that muffin with no nuts."

"One fixed muffin, anything else?"

"Fixed?"

"I prefer calling it 'fixed' instead of 'has no nuts'."

"Oh, you're allergic too?"

"Nah. Two bucks, please."

The woman paid, then raised her muffin in a vague toasting gesture and chomped right into it. Her face lit up as she chewed, and she quickly forgot the entire food critic routine she had prepared in her head.

"Wow, this is super delish!" she said, blue crumbs falling out of her mouth. "It tastes like cran-razz, but without the weird blue flavor, ya know what I mean? It's really scrumptious!"

"That's a new one," Courtney said, pulling the cardboard sign from the from of the table and adding the word "scrumptious" to a growing list of praises for the baked goods.

"Oh my god, I want you to go and just give your baker a big old kiss for me!" she said, mouth full.

"I would do just that, if she weren't currently off taking a pee," Courtney said, watching her with some degree of morbid fascination.

"Oh my god, I'm gonna have to buy another, or maybe two even!" she continued, licking her fingers. "...er, for my son, of course. He's just gonna love these! Can I get another fixed one, and one with nuts still attached?"

Shortly after she paid and left the bake sale in jolly spirits, Courtney's partner-in-crime returned to the table.

"Alright, that about wraps it up," she announced, leaning on the table.

"A very productive bathroom break, I take it?"

"No, ya ding-dong, the bake sale!"

"Right," Courtney said, pulling out a clipboard. "Grand total today was almost two hundred dollars!"

"Damn," the baker said, lifting her peppermint-stripe shades. "I knew we'd be good at this, but I didn't expect us to be THAT good!"

"Niki Bracket," Courtney said, holding an invisible microphone to her mouth, "You've just successfully made two hundred dollars off your own crazy recipe at a bake sale where kids normally only walk away with thirty if they're lucky. What are you going to do now?"

"Well Courtney, it ain't enough for a trip to a popular theme park," Niki said, snatching up the cash box. "So instead I'm gonna 'do the right thing', as they say, and pay what I owe to my impeccably sexy sales associate!"

"...wha? Who, me?"

"Yeah, you! You see any other sexy sales associates around here?"

"Oh…" she said, taken off guard, but not at all disappointed. "I wasn't even expecting you to pay me anything. I'm literally just helping for extra credit."

"Well you're also about to earn some EXTRA credit," Niki said, grinning. "Let's see, two hundred dollars, less the cost of materials, twenty bucks there, leaves us with one-eighty...so here's your first paycheck!"

Courtney stared at the stack of bills being offered. "...are you serious?"

"What, you never seen money before?"

"Niki, I...you...that's a lot of money!" she managed to spit out. "Holy shit, that's like half of the whole stack!"

"Exactly half," Niki corrected her. "You did half my job, I did the other half. Half and half is whole milk, baby! Take it!"

She accepted the cash slowly, still in shock. "But...you did way more than half of the work. You slaved over the baking, you created the recipe, made the signs, paid the entrance fee for the bake sale...you really ought to take more for yourself!"

"Baloney," Niki said, sticking out her tongue. "Besides, you're a great salesperson! You upsold that mom like 300%, you're a damn natural at this! Half the work, half the pay! No arguments!"

"Niki…".

"Hey, you wanna do this again sometime?" Niki said, pocketing the rest and taking down the signs. "I'm gonna use this money to get started on a REAL project, and I could for damn sure use a good salesperson at my side!"

Several seconds ticked by as she tried to process this, but in the end she just nodded and smiled. Quitting high school to become a confectionary salesperson sounded like a great idea, at least at the time.

"Great!" Niki said, flashing a grin. "We're gonna do amazing things...we're gonna revolutionize the whole damn candy biz!"

"And," she added under her breath, "We're gonna show the world we don't have to play by their rules...".

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The work was always hot, and the clothes were usually covered in sweat, but the pay was enough to keep him and his daughter housed and fed, and that was all that mattered. He wiped his brow and stepped away from the oven for a breath of slightly less stale air.

Henry had never expected he would spend his life working in a candy factory. Outside of fantastical movies featuring colorful tiny singing men, he'd never even seen a candy factory, much less considered working in one. But nevertheless, he was working in one now, and it was imperative to his survival that he remain working in one.

He had lost both his old job and his old wife in the past year, and, nearing the brink of homelessness, was desperate for any margin of work he could find. But with the economy still broken, employers chose to spread thin to retain their profitability. There were simply too many unemployed vying for every potential job for anyone to advance.

But all of that headache finally changed one day at the local unemployment office, where he was scooped up by a young business entrepreneur with an extremely amateur operation in a questionable old warehouse on the outskirts of town. She had called herself a candy visionary, and had already achieved small-time cult success. She interviewed him on the spot, sweatpants and all, and the whole interview was comprised of one question:

"Can you bake cookies, 8 hours, 5 days, for 15 an hour?"

The decidedly blunt prospect had hit him so suddenly that he just blinked and dumbly answered, "...yeah, I can do that."

The next thing he knew, he was standing in a poorly-lit room full of ovens and packing materials, coughing out hot, stagnant air and scraping white chocolate peppermint chip cookies off a baking tray and into a small box, and feeling very heavy on his feet and in gross need of a shower.

For nigh on a month he'd been at this now, earning just enough to keep himself and his daughter shacked in a nearby apartment. The work was physically exhausting, but he was undoubtedly grateful for it, regardless. Better something than nothing, he liked to tell himself...

...as long as the work never changes.

He heard the main door open behind him as knelt down to pull a fresh batch from the oven. A pair of loud, thunky footsteps marched their way over in his direction. He set the tray down atop the stove and turned to face a slightly wrinkled and slightly disgruntled woman staring back up at him.

She stood half a head shorter than he did, and was dressed like she'd just escaped from a prison, complete with a loose-fitting orange jumpsuit, despite the heat. Thick salt-and-pepper curls poured out of the top of her head, coming to an end just past her shoulders.

But more importantly, there was a large backpack containing two large tanks strapped over her shoulder, and to that connected a long shaft which she held in one hand. Henry knew he'd seen something like this somewhere before.

"Fumigation?" he asked, scratching his head. "Already?"

"There will be fumes, yes," the woman said, dryly. "There is no decent pest control without foul fumes to smoke them away."

Henry snorted and again wiped the sweat from his brow. "Well I wish someone woulda told me you were coming today. Don't know how they expect us to get any work done if you're spraying your load all over the walls...heh...er, sorry, that was uh, probably a little inappropriate...".

The woman didn't respond, instead holding up her nozzle and checking the gear on it.

"You, uh, want me to move anything or...anything?" he asked, shuffling nervously to the side. "I could, uh...shit, I need to wrap these cookies first...ahm, yeah, nobody gave me any notice on this, so I'm not even ready at all."

"It would not matter," she said, a rubber-gloved hand tracing the shaft down toward the trigger in her other hand. "The paper said to arrive, to burn, and to walk away without the satisfaction of watching them be consumed. Disgusting. Disgrace."

"Uhhh…?" Henry scratched his head and shrugged. "Okay, hang on, I'm just gonna go ask Kristen if she knows what's going on. Maybe I missed something. Just, uh...just wait here a sec."

"Sure, this is a good place to stand," the woman said with a sniff. She pointed the nozzle in his direction, taking hold with both hands.

"Whoa, and, uh, careful where you point that, now," he added with a nervous chuckle.

"It's fine," she replied, absolutely deadpan. "I never miss."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Listen, I don't really know anything else about her," Dan said, trying not to draw attention to the bead of sweat trickling down his forehead. He didn't want his nervousness to suggest that he might potentially be going crazy.

"Well Mister Dee…" the lawman responded, scratching his chin and leaning back in the velvet chair, "If all you've got is a story about a girl in a fantasy costume and a bump on your noggin, then I'm afraid the only case we have to work with is the case of you potentially going crazy."

"I'm telling you, I didn't make this up!" he insisted, slamming a hand on his desk. "I've seen her before, and I know for certain you've received similar reports in the past! Why would I be lying about this?"

The lawyer sighed and crossed his legs. "I never said you were lying. But other than a nasty bump, what proof do you have that it happened? Officers aren't just going to strike up a manhunt...er, womanhunt...? A HUNT. They're not going to just take off on a witch hunt just because a prominent and wealthy businessman like yourself said she hit him with a giant...what did you say it was? A pixie stick?"

"It was a lollipop, dammit!" Dan growled. "A pixie stick isn't even in the same genre of candy as a lollipop, how could you possibly mistake the two?"

"Okay, alright," the lawyer said, raising a hand in surrender. "I need you to stay calm, Dan. Just tell me everything you know about this girl. Explain what happened, and what you want done about it. That's all you have to tell me for right now. Can you do that?"

Dan crossed his arms and grunted. "Fine. Just don't patronize me like that. And will somebody turn on the AC? It's getting hot as hell in here…".

His secretary, a mousey young lady with taped-up glasses stood up and obliged.

"Thank you, Beebee," he said, taking a calming breath. "Okay, you want facts, and facts alone. Guess I'll start by describing her appearance."

"Anything will help."

He closed his eyes and recounted. "Okay, so...she wears this thick body armor that's shaped and painted like candy."

"Candy? Can you be more specific?"

"You know, shoulder pads in the shape of candy corn, the chest part is like a peppermint stripe...or no, it's more like a swirl. Like a taffy swirl with peppermint colors. The lower half is some kind of...I don't even understand it. It's shaped like a cupcake wrapper, but upside down, so it's kind of a skirt? A metal skirt? I don't understand that. It's stupid and completely out of place. An absolute design disaster."

"You're getting a little off-topic," the lawyer said, doodling on his notepad instead of writing the details. This was getting more ridiculous than he had time to bother with.

"Right, sorry. She has an ordinary motorcycle helmet with...with sprinkles on top. Oh, and it's got a see-through red visor. She's a peppermint freak. And of course, as I've mentioned, a giant lollipop that she carries on her back."

"What color is the lollipop?"

"What? What difference does that make? It's a giant lollipop hammer, it's a pretty unique identifier!"

"I can't be expected to process a report on this character if there are any gaps in the details," he said, attempting to draw out the consultation just enough so that it would spill over past the 60-minute mark and he could charge for a second hour.

"What do you expect, to find a warehouse full of giant lollipops in dozens of colors?" Dan paused for a moment before adding, "Never mind, don't answer that."

"Alright, what else can I tell you...her skin is light, but she's not white. Pretty sure she's got those asian eyes. Don't know her hair color, but it's probably black or some weird peppermint dye job. Freak. She's obviously fit, if she can move in that suit the way she does, and her voice is still pretty high-pitched, so she's gotta be young. Probably 20s. Maybe even still a teen. Might not even be legal."

He stopped and glanced back over at the lawyer, who had completely stopped and sat with an eyebrow raised in alarming disapproval.

"Legal in citizenship status I mean," Dan groaned. "You know. Asian eyes and all that…".

The lawyer blinked, expression unchanging.

"You gonna add that or what?" Dan urged, pointing to the notepad. "Could give the cops a reason to go sniff her out."

"No Dan," he replied, shaking his head. "As a lawyer and as a decent person, I'm duty-bound to inform you that that's racial profiling 101."

"And since when did that ever stop the police?" Dan said with a snort. "Oh come on, that was funny!"

His lawyer still didn't laugh.

"Okay, okay, alright, fine," Dan said, waving the issue away. "Sensitive topic, I guess. Strike that from the record, or whatever the lingo is."

"Do you know anything else at all?" the lawyer repeated, tired.

Dan looked at the floor pensively for a moment. He had hoped a bit of humor would lighten the situation, but it clearly wasn't helping at all now. Finding a hook for this case was harder than he had anticipated, especially if he intended to keep himself in the victim spotlight at the end of all this. He decided it was time to play the rest of his hand.

"The only other thing I know about this crazy," he said, steepling his fingers, "Is that she only shows up when something happens to my fellow competing candy business, Knickknack Snacks...".


	7. Like Incandescence

The sign out front still read "Knickknack Snacks", but on any given day there was usually much less smoke and screaming hovering around the place. The current state of affairs most definitely did not reflect an accurate picture of the business or its owner's policies, and to an outsider might actually have resembled a place quite hostile and dangerous.

With Niki Bracket currently nowhere to be found for an explanation, and her right-hand secretary thoroughly engrossed in herding panicked employees from one building to another, the local school tour group was left in quite a mess of disarray and confusion. The students were eagerly recording video of the chaos on their phones, despite being discouraged by their respective chaperones, for the sake of safety.

But caution was soon to be cast aside, as one student shouted, "Oh my god, it's Lollyhamma!"

As one, the students all turned their heads just in time to catch a shining glimpse of white armor jetting its way into the burning warehouse, crashing shoulder-first through the front door. No one wanted to miss this. Then again, no one wanted to risk third degree burns to run inside a burning building for a vague shot at capturing blurry, grainy photographic evidence of an urban legend in action, either.

Their loss, though.

Lollyhamma darted from foot to foot through the roaring flames, dashing between melting ovens and fractured shelves piled high with the ashes of ruined stock. None of it was important right now, she would certainly be back once the fire had been quelled. She had barely a minute or two to be in the building before her armor would start to melt. Her eyes were pointed at the ground, looking for bodies...specifically of potential culprits.

The fire was still young, she noted. It had only begun climbing the walls. But the smoke had already filled half the room, so the perpetrator had most likely already vanished. If not, she had every intention of tackling and nailing them to a cross.

Her eyes widened as she blasted forward, pushing aside a falling shelf with her shoulder. A body lay collapsed on the floor in front of her. She quickly scooped them up over her shoulder and dashed her way back toward the main door.

She landed in a heap outside the building, quickly pulling herself back to her feet as the onlookers cheered. She flipped the body over and handed over to Minnie, who had been standing by for just such an occasion. Lolly took a look at the face of the recovered body.

"Kristen…" she whispered in pained recognition. "Burned?...or dead…?".

"I will let the paramedics determine which," Minnie said in perfect sobriety. "Thank you for your service."

Lolly turned back to her and nodded before quickly jetting off behind the flaming building. Minnie watched her go with a certain glint behind her glasses. She made a mental note and quickly refocused her attention where it needed to be.

There was no time for Lolly to worry about checking her own self for burn damage or the condition of her armor. Locating the firebug was her objective now, and nothing else could stand in the way of that, if her itching desire for blood had any say in the matter. She pulled a chocolate bar from her belt and crammed the whole thing into mouth to suppress the taste as she scouted the surrounding horizon.

There! In the distance, she could faintly make out the outline of someone clamoring up one side of the rock shelf that surrounded the perimeter of Knickknack's real estate. The orange of their outfit blended smoothly into the desert landscape, but the black boots gave it away. She powered her way forward as quickly as rocket-launching boots made possible.

No escape this time, she told herself, swallowing the chocolate. After all the damage they've done me, it's finally time to exercise justice. The more violent, the more just. The fire you lit on my lawn is nothing compared to the fire you lit in my bones.

As she approached approximate earshot, she shouted, "YOU! STOP!"

The figure ignored her and kept climbing, heading for the summit of the shelf. Lolly dug her heels into the ground with each step, trying to gain more thrust as she launched herself up past boulders and dead vegetation up the side of the wall. The suspect flipped over the top of the shelf and continued their escape.

With one final shotgun blast, Lolly soared over and landed in front of her prey. She deftly snatched the hammer out of its holster and twirled it around menacingly before striking it into the ground defiantly.

"When I tell you to stop, I expect you to listen," she hissed, breathing heavily.

"Don't ever expect anything," the old woman before her said with a sniff. "Make it happen or leave it alone."

Lolly raised an eyebrow, looking the woman over from head to toe. She hadn't expected the criminal to be an elder, least of all one shouldering a hefty, military-grade backpack and an ash-laden face full of wrinkles and blunt disregard.

"Alright, then let's make something happen," Lolly replied, the afternoon sun flaring off her helmet and into her opponent's eyes.

"Okay, candy child, what are we making happen?"

She narrowed her eyes. The woman's relative calmness didn't sit well with her. "Are you the one who started the fire?"

The woman sighed. "Yes, I brought that life into this world. But I don't want glory for it. The pretenses were ugly, and I want nothing but distance from them."

"Life?" Lolly growled. "What the hell are you talking about? You didn't BRING life, you took it away! You brought death!"

The woman's eyes went wide as she glared back. "I admit to disrespecting the marvel and the spark, but I would never rob such a proud blaze of its right to life! Take back your harsh words!"

"Again, what the hell are you talking about? Are you proud of the destruction you've just caused?"

"Heathen," she spit back. "Should have known."

Lolly took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the hammer. "Fine, be mysterious, I don't care about your intentions, anyway! Who hired you?"

"Not my obligation," the woman said, shoving Lolly aside and continuing her walk away. "Not my policy either. To reveal names is to break their trust."

She stopped and doubled over at the waist as a certain hammer made crushing contact with her stomach. She dropped to all fours and coughed fitfully, an occasional puff of smoke following after. Lolly stepped in front of her, breath still heavy from the mounting rage. The imminent sugar rush of the chocolate seemed to only amplify it.

"Now it IS your policy," she said, shouldering the hammer. "Start talking, or I'll beat the creamy filling out of you now instead of later."

The enemy climbed to her feet. She was clearly quite strong for such a wrinkled old woman, Lolly noted.

"So we're speaking the language of violence now?" she said, a spry smile creeping across her face. "Good. Such a tongue I am fluent in!"

In an instant, she whipped herself around on her heel, wand pointed outward and directly at Lolly's head. She pulled one trigger, then the other, as a roaring stream of molten fire burst forth from the nozzle.

But Lolly's reflexes were quicker. She launched herself skyward, just out of reach of the flame, and, with an extra flourish, landed in a roll a few steps aside, keeping her distance. She hopped to her feet and readied her hammer for another strike. But she hesitated.

"Don't try it again," the woman warned, firmly rooted in place and flamethrower pointed dead forward. "I hate to waste precious fuel on common heathens."

Her face suggested she would do it anyway, though. Lolly ground her teeth together furiously as the gears in her brain spun, thinking of a way to get close enough to bash her skull in without getting horrifically disfigured by fire.

The woman apparently noticed her frustration. "Yes, you continue to think about your place. You with your stupid outfit are no convincing threat to my work."

"Do you even know who I am, grandma?" Lolly shouted. She could taste blood again instead of chocolate, and that only made her angrier still.

"Not my obligation," she repeated, again walking onward. "...though I might say the very same of you, candied child."

"I am not a damn child!" Lolly screamed back, boiling inside. "I'll prove it!"

She reared back, spun around, then shot herself upward, scrambling up the steep side of the towering rock, step by explosive step. Nearly halfway up her ascent, she flipped over in mid-air and swung the hammer in an upward swath, knocking loose a massive boulder. Both she and it tumbled their way back down to the ground.

The woman had been ignoring the spectacle this whole time and had actually started walking away, up until the moment she heard a rolling rumble emanating from the cliffside, that is. She quickly dove forward to escape the boulder's trajectory and landed in a heap on the ground. The boulder came to rest off to the side as Lolly touched down and immediately leapt forward again, making a beeline for her enemy.

As she neared, the surge of sugar rush washed over her in waves of buzzing energy. She could see it all happening in slow motion. The old woman flung her body up into a sitting position, casting dust all about. The pungent smell of fuel loomed in the air as the shaft of her flamethrower raised into position. Gnarled fingers wound tightly around each trigger as the woman braced her shoulder against the backpack tanks. Her face twisted into a wicked scowl, burned like copper and tarnished with soot. Defensive instinct took over. As she flew forward, Lolly threw her oversized pink gauntlets over her face and leaned away.

The oncoming blast flared up around her, beating harshly against the huge candy hearts adorning either glove. One read "HUG ME" and the other "KISS ME". In that instant, the flames did exactly that, kissing her hands with sharp tongues of fire before enveloping them in a searing, burning hug.

Lolly flew right on through the flame, overshooting her intended target and landing face-first just past the woman's head. After a momentary mental check to make sure each of her body parts was still attached and functional, she twirled herself up on her feet and immediately dropped back into a ready stance.

The woman picked herself up as well and faced her, frowning. "I'm disappointed. If not crispy flesh, that heat should have left melting marks on your armor at the least...what is that mess made of?"

Lolly was absolutely not in a mood for battle banter, but she she couldn't resist this opportunity. "It's made of candy," she said with a barbed grin.

"Yes, made in the image of candy," the woman said with a snort. "Disgusting processed sludge. I already saw that. But what is the composition? What material can ignore even such heat as mine?"

"I told you," Lolly repeated, snatching her hammer from the ground. "It's made of hard candy, just like this hammer!"

"God does not smile upon liars," she snapped back. "Candy is weak. You are feeding me a lie, like the smoke of boiling water!"

"There's no lie about it, babe!" Lolly argued as she began walking a circle. "This stuff is made of pure candy. Don't you know how candy is made?"

"Candy burns like all else," the woman grumbled, leering back as she began walking the same circle in the opposite direction.

"Candy is forged in the heat of an oven, idiot! It's designed to harden up in extreme heat!"

"I don't believe your lies!"

"Why don't you come lick me and find out then?"

"Lick you?" she scoffed. "You may as well ask me to lick the cow's anus, you are so full of bullshit."

Lolly's face returned to its former sour-candy grimace. "Then I guess I'll have to show instead of tell!"

She quickly hopped left, then launched herself right, dodging the incoming spray of fire, and swung out behind her in a wide arc. Missed.

The woman whipped back around and stood her ground, watching as Lolly deftly landed, recoiled, then launched backward to where she had started, missing another swing on the way.

"Enough of that!" the woman shouted. "These acrobatics are tiring my muscles! I want to sit!"

With one great, sweeping motion, she laid down a thick stream of fire on the ground in a wide semicircle around herself. Lolly backed up and shielded her face, peeking through a narrow window between gloves in an effort to not lose sight of her enemy.

"Quit hiding and fight me!"

"You've seen your last of me!" the woman shouted. "And may any god grant I've seen my last of you!"

"Get back here!" Lolly screamed, leaping her way through the wall only to find more flames beyond. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"Candace," she heard the woman's voice growing fainter beneath the constant rumble of fire. "Like incandescence...remember me only in this way."

"Don't you dare run away from me!" She backed out from the firewall and tried to rocket jump her way around it, but her boot had run out of explosive charges. With a frustrated growl, she dashed on foot around the edge of the blaze, trying to keep Candace in sight. But by the time she'd gotten clear of it, another fresh blast had been laid down, flaring up again with a roar. This path was completely blocked.

She doubled back and tried the coming around from the other side. But by this time Candace was long gone, having cleared the summit of the rock shelf and disappeared among the boulders and sheltering outcrops below. Lolly ground her teeth together until they ached, hands shaking as she tightened her grip on the hammer.

"Get out here, you fucking coward!" she screamed in a vengeful fury, smashing the hammer against the nearest boulder. "Stop hiding behind your smokescreen and faceup for what you've done! I don't care if I get burned, I'm not afraid of you! GET OUT HERE!"

Her words rang with the righteous fire of vengeance, but behind the soot-covered visor of her helmet lay only the slow burn of pain. All of that anger was directly channeled into each swing of the hammer, again and again as she smashed the stones around her. She yelled until the pain in the pit of her throat became unbearable.

With one final, terminal blow, the hammer shattered into pieces. She dropped to her knees and stayed there for a few minutes, chest heaving up and down as the fire crackled and burned behind her. This wasn't just defeat. This was loss. Failure. Innocent people had been killed, and she hadn't been able to prevent any of it. The mere thought stung like a hot needle.

She didn't know how long she sat there, regaining her breath. The looming depression of this loss felt heavier every second she stayed. She needed to stand up now, or be crushed under the weight of responsibility. She took hold of the remains of her hammer and shouldered it like it was still whole as she made her way back toward the scene of the crime.

It hadn't even occurred to her yet why she wanted to return to it. To sulk a bit longer in the sadness she hadn't been able to prevent? To hunt for clues to the whereabouts of the villain she couldn't defeat? To bring herself face to face with how many people she'd failed? To let herself think that all those horrible naysayers and detractors had been right about her all along, and that none of it mattered anyway?

Part of her wanted all of it...

And yet, a bigger, smarter part of herself took over. She stopped right at the intersection of the two firewalls and shook her head. One by one, she discarded each and every one of those thoughts. She was not useless. She was not inadequate. She was not a failure.

Her fists clenched within their hard-candy gauntlets. She had lost this battle, yes. But she hadn't lost all the other battles that had come before this, and she could definitely win again in the future. There was just no way this could be the end. No way she had come so far as a defender and a hero only to lose this one battle and throw in the towel forever.

Even though this was the first battle had cost actual lives.

It'll be the LAST one too, she added, mentally. These were the lies she had to tell herself in order to once again think logically.

And so Lollyhamma did think.

Returning to the crime scene would be no good now, she told herself, pacing back and forth beside the firewall. The press will no doubt already be swarming the place, just like they always do in times of tragedy. I've got no boost charges left, so I can't make a quick getaway if things get hairy. I need a safe spot. Somewhere I can get out of costume, go back to my usual undercover self, and come up with a new plan without raising too much suspicion…

She finally took a deep, calm breath and skirted the mountainside, away from the crispy, stinking smoke tower over at Knickknack Snacks, back toward the city.  
...not that my identity is really a big secret, she continued, with a huff. Everyone probably knows already, or at least suspects it. God knows I'm not exactly subtle about it. But just in case people are morons after all, I'd better keep out of the public eye, pretend like I'm not here for a while…

She knew where she needed to hide.

She trudged on, walking into the afternoon heat toward the shady parts of the city. Not the criminally-shady part, but the part that offered shadowy respite from the sickening summer sun. That was what she wanted. Heat would only remind her of Candace now, and any thought of her would only set her blood to boiling all over again. She needed to distance herself from that feeling.

She frowned. She'd also need a new lollipop hammer…


	8. Trailblazer

There was a small house built not for comfort, but to fill up unused space in an already-crowded neighborhood. It quite literally sat between two identical ranch-style houses, built just far enough apart from each other for a small, one-person studio to fit between them.

On the outside, it was the same shade of plain off-white as its neighbors, with one window and one door and virtually no indication that it was anything more than a shared garage between the two much tidier bookend houses. The only clear sign it wasn't open for business as a hobo hotel was the sexy, super-aerodynamic hybrid car parked along the curb out front.

On the inside, a single, tiny, compressed room comprised the kitchen, living room, study, bedroom, utility room and dining room. A closet could be seen tucked in the corner beside the bed, and just past the half-sized washer and dryer, on the other side of the wall, a claustrophobic half-bathroom.

It could only be home to either someone working undercover, or someone who effortlessly strafed the line between extravagance and efficiency. And most people often assumed she was both.

Minnie sat at a small table, in a small chair, eating a bagel, sliced perfectly in half, topped evenly with raspberry-flavored cream cheese. To her left, a wireless tablet sat upright and displayed a live news feed. To her right, a steaming hot cup of coffee, black as night and sweet as sin. To any trained eye, everything about the scene suggested morning, but a close examination of the clock app on the tablet would have revealed it was in fact late afternoon.

And this exact setup, frozen forever in memory, was what she would recall in the future any time she thought about what happened next.

An abrupt knocking sound tore her eyes away from the screen. She blinked. She had not expected company, nor did she often even have company at all.

Opening the door, she was greeted by a familiar, but clearly exhausted, young face in caramel-colored business casual.

"Hello, Miss Niki."

"Minnie," Niki replied, with a curt nod, "Sorry to barge, but I caught wind of the news and I really need to talk to someone about it."

"I've already emailed you a full report of the facts so far," Minnie said, not moving from the doorway. "Have you not received it yet?"

"No, Minnie…" she said, pulling off her peppermint-rimmed shades. "I'd like to TALK about it, if you don't mind."

"Ahh...I understand, Miss Niki. Very well, come in."

She stepped back and led the way precisely four steps to her chair at the table. Niki glanced around curiously, noting the expert use of color in the house's design. The walls were a plain, vanilla white and the carpet was a rich, wine red. The furniture and appliances alternated between solid white and solid black, except for the blanket on the bed, which was a much brighter shade of red. Hardly a single square inch of floor space had been wasted.

"Wow Minnie," she finally said, sitting in the other chair at the table. "I wasn't sure what to expect, but this is quite an amazing little piece of work! You've got a real knack for minimalist design, don't you?"

"The design doesn't actually contribute anything to the functionality of this house," Minnie said with a hand wave as she paused the news feed. "But thank you, I do take a degree of pride in making an appealing design."

"It shows," Niki said, hanging her jacket on the back of the chair. "But anyway, enough kit-kat, let's get down to business."

"Sorry to interrupt, but would you like some coffee first?"

She raised her finger and paused. "...actually, that sounds wonderful. Creamer?"

"Vanilla, hazelnut, cinnamon roll, birthday cake, or spicy red hot?"

"...they make all that?"

"If you know who to ask, then yes," Minnie replied in a low, mysterious voice.

Niki made a mental note to look into the coffee creamer business after this mess was over. "Cinnamon roll sounds good."

She took a deep breath before continuing. "Alright Minnie, the short version is that someone's trying to smoke us out by straight-up setting fire to us, even going so far as to strike in broad daylight, and it's literally killing us. This is obviously no accidental fire."

"It's exactly as you predicted," Minnie nodded, serving the coffee. "Arson may be the crime of a coward, but there is always a tangible person behind it. Do you still suspect a rival candy business as the culprit?"

"As the person actually pulling the trigger?" Niki said with a sour disposition. "Nobody would be that stupid. Who in their right mind would simultaneously act as the head of a company AND be the crazy-violent vigilante doing the dirty work, right?"

"Indeed," Minnie said, pointedly making eye contact.

"Regardless of who it is though, SOMEBODY's got it in for us. And now they're out for blood...my blood? No, OUR blood…".

She idly fingered the rim of her coffee cup. "What do you think, Minnie? Is it the company they're after? Or is it me?"

"Do you have any enemies that extreme, Miss Niki? A gallery of rogues seeking your head on a silver platter?"

"Of course not!" Niki said, banging a fist on the table. "What do I look like, some kind of comic book anti-hero? I've never done anyone wrong!...well okay, I've probably done some wrong, now and later, but not anything like, homicidally wrong!"

"You've never struck me as the type of person to leave loose threads, Miss Niki," Minnie said, taking a sip. "Especially not threads that could develop into grudges. I can't imagine you'd have any unfinished business with a rival, especially nothing so bold as to incite vengeful arson."

"You're damn right!" Niki said, snapping her fingers. "I crunch everything head-on and leave no friendly crumbs after! No easier way to deal with things, just take matters right into your hand and chomp down like a kid trying to get to the chocolate center of a lollipop!"

"Your inimitable aptitude for candy metaphors never fails to astound me."

"I live to impress, Minnie!" she said as her half-smile faded. "...always have, I suppose. Even back when I first got really big into selling baked treats. I wanted to impress people."

"You became a confectioner for the attention it garners?" Minnie asked, tilting her head slightly. "I've never pegged you as someone looking for approval."

"Oh believe me, it's not approval that I want," she denied, her hand balling up. "If I wanted approval, I'd have gone to college and studied business like my dad still wants me to. No, I'm long past looking for approval. But damn, do I ever love leaving a good impression on people."

"Validation from others inspires the confidence to succeed," Minnie nodded.

"I wanted to be the one who made it in the business world, Minnie," Niki continued, pushing aside her coffee to talk with her hands. "I wanted to be the underdog. I wanted people to say 'Look at her, she's the one who broke the rules and got away with it!'. To succeed on my own merits, and for people to see and recognize that. Not for my own ego, but so they'd all see my story and the success it got me and use that as a model for building themselves!"

"You wanted to be a trailblazer then," Minnie said, trying to follow. "A trendsetter. A visionary."

"No, it's deeper than just that…" Niki said, noticeably frustrated as she tried to explain. "I want people to break away from the rules, like I do. I want them to understand the system of the business world, and then deliberately break it apart!"

"To what end, Miss Niki? It sounds like you're brewing a cup of anarchy."

"If you wanna call it that, fine!" she said tossing her hands in the air. "The candy business is a broken system, Minnie. The rules are all wrong, they're all stacked to one side. If I have to break the rules just to come out even and fair, then the rules are already broken anyway!"

"What I want," she said, bringing herself back to normal volume, "Is to successfully destroy that system, and for others to follow me once I do. I'm already running my own company by my own rules. I'm making a new system that's fair, one that gives everyone a fair chance to win. I'm playing by my own rules. And you're know what? It's working! I cut out that sales bonus bullshit so everyone gets an equal share, I'm employing people who can't get work anywhere else, and most importantly, the company is STILL thriving! We're beating the system AND we're successful! We're on the rocky road to total victory!"

She paused for a moment, then took a sip. "...or at least we were. Seems like someone out there isn't keen on just how successful we've gotten lately."

"The facts aren't clear yet," Minnie said, hesitantly. "...but I won't deny the glaring suggestion of explicit sabotage against the company."

"Of course they're sabotaging the company!" Niki growled, raising her voice. "They can't stand the idea of some little no-name chiclet who doesn't play by their rules just swooping right into the candy business game, making waves all on her own and becoming an actual threat to their so-called success! They're greedy and jealous of keeping a stranglehold on the industry, and they don't wanna share the business for fear they won't be making every last dollar they could be making! So now these FUCKERS are turning up the heat on me, literally, to brick my cake and burn down my kitchen!"

"Miss Niki, please calm down…".

"How can you say that to me?!" she shouted, accidentally spilling her coffee on the table. "How do YOU stay so calm, Minnie? People are DYING! My business is being ATTACKED! It's probably only a matter of time before I've got assassins showing up at my own front door! How do you expect me to stay calm through all this?!"

"...because you always know what to do."

"BUT I DON'T!" she screamed, burying her head into her arms. "I don't know what to do anymore, Minnie! They're cutting me down right before my eyes, I'm losing everything I've worked to build up! I'm losing my grip and I'm losing my head!"

Minnie placed a hand on Niki's shoulder. "You're only doing the best you know how. And you're very brave to continue to do so."

"I'm not brave! I don't know anything!"

"Shhh, everything will work out."

"No…" she mumbled, picking herself up. "No it won't, Minnie...this is really bad. This is the worst it's ever been. I don't think I can fix it anymore, and even worse, I've gotta face the fact that this is all my fault...".

Minnie frowned. "I'm quite certain your enemies are the ones starting the fires, Miss Niki. Not you."

"But I'm the reason they're lighting the candles!" she groaned. "If it weren't for me and my decisions, the business--".

"Wouldn't even exist."

Niki slowly turned up to face her, shaking her head as she held back tears.

"Your decisions and your leadership have already defied everyone's expectations, Miss Niki," Minnie continued, eyes locked with hers. "Even my own. You proved that you, even at such a young and inexperienced age, can run a company the way you intended to, even going outside the so-called rules of the game. You created jobs, you provided fair pay, and you created products with great lasting potential. You did all of that. You are not the failure here."

Silence hovered for a few extra moments before the wall finally broke down and the tears burst forth. She grabbed Minnie's hand and just let them flow unchecked, glad to finally feel release from the weighted pain no longer trapped inside.

Several minutes passed as Niki brought herself back together. Minnie wouldn't release her hand until she finally tugged to pull it back. Once she'd wiped the tears away, things suddenly didn't seem quite as bleak as before.

"...thanks, Minnie." she finally said, with as much of a smile as she could muster.

"Always my pleasure to help, Miss Niki."

"You'll never know how much that means to me," Niki said with a sniff. "I know I've made a point to treat all of my employees equally, but it's different with you. You don't just help run my company...you keep me as a person running, too. You're absolutely irreplaceable, Minnie. I just want you to know that."

"...when I die, the doctors will identify your flattery as my cause of death," Minnie said, quickly finishing her coffee to hide her flushed face.

Niki looked up at her for a moment, eyebrow raised, then descended into a bout of uncontrollable laughter.

Minnie simply smiled in response and cleared the table, moving her tablet over to the desk two steps away. Niki settled back down as she returned to her seat.

"So," Minnie said, straightening her hair. "What will you do now, Miss Niki?"

"Well, I think I made myself pretty clear," she replied, sitting up straight. "I have no idea what I'm gonna do. I don't even know whether continuing the business is a good idea or a bad one now. What do I do about tomorrow? Just tell everyone to show up for work anyway, and make sure they get paid for it? How do I know it'll be safe to work? Hell, how do I know the last remaining warehouse isn't already on fire right now, while we're not looking at it?"

"I've asked some members of the local fire department to keep an eye on the place," Minnie assured her. "I'll receive an alert the moment anything goes wrong."

"Always one step ahead, aren't you?"

"It's my superpower."

Niki smiled and nodded. "Well, I guess that just leaves the question of what we can do with what we have left, and whether or not it's worth risking anyone's gumballs to show up tomorrow."

"There's nothing forcing you to make a decision this very minute, you know."

"I've never been one to hold off on making a decision, Minnie," she said, cleaning her fingernails. "If it comes down to flipping a coin, I'll do that before I take a night to sleep on it. Sometimes the best tactic is swift decisiveness."

"That is true. And you know best how to work your own strategy."

"Right." All in one motion, she straightened her hair, and her spine, and her resolve. "Then I vote...we stick to it. We push harder than ever to stay afloat as a company! Desperate times, and all that! I can't let my people down now...not when we've only just begun!"

Minnie smiled and gave a polite golf clap.

"All we have to do is keep looking out for tomorrow," Niki added, pensively. "Like that song with the orphan...if she was being hunted by a pyromaniac assassin, I mean."  
She paused a moment longer, then quickly shot her glance up toward Minnie. "...Minnie, I'm being hunted. There's a maniac out there trying to crisp my cream!"

"Now is a bit excessive for a delayed reaction, Miss Niki."

"How am I gonna MAKE IT to tomorrow?" Niki asked, putting a hand to her forehead. "How am I even going to SLEEP tonight?"

"I would suggest a list of sleep aids," Minnie said, adjusting her glasses, "But your fear is clearly rooted in security, not quantity."

Niki nodded, turning her head slowly to look around the room, then back down at the table, then finally back up at Minnie. "...Minnie, would you consider it a bit too forward if I asked to spend the night here?"

A brief pause hung as Minnie slowly raised an eyebrow. "You'd like to sleep here tonight, with me?"

"Better here than by myself," Niki replied, looking uncomfortably out the lone window in the room. "I suddenly don't feel very safe about being alone. It's okay to say no, though."

"You aren't claustrophobic, are you?" Minnie asked, forming a checklist in her head.

"What? Not in the least!"

"You can plainly see that I only have one bed, so we would have to spend the night in physical contact."

"I'm fine with sharing, if you are."

"And during these warm summer months, I tend to sleep in the nude."

"What, you suggesting I'm some kinda prude?" Niki said, tossing a hand in the air. "I'm not gonna judge! Your house, your rules!"

At last, Minnie smiled and nodded. "I would be honored to sleep with you tonight, Miss Niki."

"What's with the smirk?" Niki asked coyly, her nerves already settling. "You suggesting I follow suit? Birthday suit, to be exact?"

"I can't pretend I'll be offended if you do, but surely you can predict the sort of gossip that would spark from that," she replied, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

"Let the people talk, baby," Niki crooned, puckering her lips. "I'd trade a hundred saucy water cooler rumors for one good night's rest with my one true girl! No office grapevine could ever be as juicy as the passion fruit center of our candied love!"

"Your powdered sugar poetry truly steals my heart."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Everything was perfect.

In one single, culminating moment, everything was absolutely perfect. The setting sun scorching the western sky like an oozing lava flow. An aroma of impure charcoal briquettes and fresh smoke drifting aimlessly about. Lying comfortably on a bed of fresh ashes, still glowing like embers around the edges, as they tangled themselves up in her hair. And the familiar, inviting taste of a fresh, steaming chili dog, liberally speckled with onions.

For each person alive on the planet, there is a certain alignment of individual elements that can results in a perfect convergence of cosmic harmony, showering them with shimmering waves of absolute serenity. For Candace the wandering arsonist, this was one such alignment.

Life had been hard lately. Not that life wasn't always hard, but it had been especially difficult the past few weeks. Business was slow. The jobs were not suited to her personal preference. Gas was expensive. Well, gasoline, anyway. She swallowed the last of her meal and patted her stomach.

This current moment of unfiltered peace was a welcome change from the unpleasantness. Not that killing people was particularly unpleasant, per se. She'd dealt with people before, and generally hadn't liked them very much to begin with. Besides, she knew about what happened to people after they died, and that knowledge was comfort enough to quell her inhibitions about causing said death.

Now fire, that was something she had no problems dealing with. Fire was vibrant and radiant, always happy to be alive, the true life of the party. Fire was something that didn't hate you for being what you were, it didn't even care what you were. And if you played the right cards, fire could keep you entertained for hours on end with its dance, its warmth, and its profound views on metaphor and philosophy.

It should go without saying that Candace's religious views on pyromania were an acquired taste, and anyone who wasn't Candace was probably just a tasteless philistine.  
But no one ever asked about her thoughts, no one ever asked why she did what was written on her business cards. They just saw the words "arson for hire" and paid her for simple light-and-flight jobs, usually as an act of aggression toward other people they didn't like. No one ever asked why Candace was so enamored with bringing the life of fire into the world.

Maybe there will rise a day when I will get to preach the pure beauty of the flame, she thought, rolling over on her side to watch the perfect moment fade away. Maybe there will also rise a day when I will learn that my wishes are only more tinder…

The moment gone, she grunted, sat up, farted and finally stopped avoiding the upcoming job she'd already accepted. She was even less happy about this one because the risk factor was quite high, and the client specifically requested she keep the fire localized and contained if possible. What was the point of sparking life if only to keep it in a jar, to deprive it of all potential for greatness in this world?

"Heathens," she hissed aloud, spitting in disgust before hoisting herself up and tending to refilling her backpack tanks. "Where's the honor I deserve for the shit I slog through, all so that their pathetic agendas be fulfilled?"

The sun gloomily sank beneath the edge of the horizon, stealing all the life from the sky as it left, leaving the stage open for the next big act.


	9. Specter

"I'm really not happy with all this yelling I've been doing lately!" Dandy yelled, as he'd been doing a lot of lately.

"Then perhaps, sensibly, you should stop that," the figure in the faded teal business jacket said. Even in the full light of the office, the shadow cast from their hat and the way they stood made it difficult to make out all the details of their face. Almost precisely as they had intended.

"Don't pull that cool, laid-back mystery tone with me," Dan warned, wagging his finger. "I have every reason to be upset with you. I don't like the way you're taking this."

"Frankly, I imagine I have every right to be offended myself," the figure said with a heavy sigh. "I'm only doing the job I've been hired for, and if that offends you, perhaps you should terminate my employment yourself."

Dandy grit his teeth and absent-mindedly leafed through the stack of reports on his desk once again. "You were hired to stir up trouble - and yes, I realize how thin the ice I'm skating on is there - but you were also hired to keep this under wraps! I know for certain you're good with secrets, Mister...ehm, Miss?…ter?...YOU. You strike me as a professional secreteer!"

"Perhaps...too good with secrets?" the figure offered. "So good that you don't even realize that yes, I am, in fact, keeping everything very much under wraps?"

"Arson?? And murder??" he shouted, throwing a hand into the air. "You call all of that 'discrete'? I wouldn't be surprised if the police are sitting right outside my office door this moment, waiting for me to confess so they can haul me right off to the clink!"

"The Clink is a prison in the United Kingdom," the figure said matter-of-factly. "You're American. It's highly unlikely you'll be thrown transatlantically into that particular--".

"It's an expression, you poltergeist!"

"No no," they corrected, sternly. "A poltergeist is typically invisible and only responsible for things like spooky noises."

"You...apparition?"

"That's more like a mirage or an illusion."

"...specter?"

"That works."

Dandy sighed and leaned back in his chair, gazing up at the ceiling and rubbing his temples. "Tell me, Specter...that's your new name, by the way, so I don't have to keep calling you 'Hey You' or 'Androgynous Person In The Teal Suit And Derby', that one's a mouthful. So, Specter, tell me, please. How are big, bright, burning columns of fire and a body count now above zero is at all fit to be called 'a discrete operation'?!"

Specter grinned and adjusted their shaded glasses. "Why, arson is the perfect crime, to be honest. What evidence does arson leave behind?"

"A giant smoking crater and many hours' worth of overtime in the local fire department's payroll books, that's what!"

"What does one find in a giant, smoking crater, mister Dandy Candy man?"

"Umm...f-footprints?"

"Not even those," Specter said, teeth sparkling. "Fire burns away that which we want gone, and leaves not even a shred of evidence behind. So the police know something caught fire. What can they do about it? The damage is done, there's nothing to recover, and there's no proof you or I did a thing."

"What about those paper contracts of yours?" Dandy pressed. "And what about the body recovered from the warehouse?"

"I already told you, fire takes care of any evidence, including contracts," came the laid back reply, followed by a more cautious tone. "But what do you mean, 'recovered'?"

"Don't you watch the internet? There was a body pulled out of the wreckage!" Dandy pulled up the news clip on his tablet. "See? What was her name...Kristen Chapman! Burned alive. Not breathing, but that body is also evidence that wasn't destroyed!"

"Who recovered the body?" Specter asked, the faintest strains of a frown developing on their forehead.

"That damned candy bitch herself," Dandy said with a sneer. "Lollyhammer...or should I say, Niki Bracket in a homemade halloween costume."

Specter took a moment to weigh this new information, then settled back into a half-smile. "Then, as she was the only outside person at the scene of the crime, that leaves her as suspect number one at this point. Crisis averted."

Dandy opened his mouth to protest, but took a minute to consider Lollyhamma being the prime suspect. The very notion suddenly seemed much brighter and sexier now than his other concerns, and he settled on accepting it, though his face suggested he still wasn't entirely convinced.

"Okay then," he said at last. "So what now, is that it? Are we finished?"

"Well…" Specter said, holding up one finger. "I'd say we've done enough damage, but there remains one final piece to this little puzzle that worries me."

"Augh, there's more?" he whined, backhanding the reports and scattering them across his desk. "When will we finally be able to put this whole mess behind us? I'm tired of feeling very uncomfortable with myself…".

"Your little rat-mole has informed me that someone in the enemy's ranks may be just a little too smart for their own good," they continued, eerily. "So I decided, on your best interest, that one more job ought to cover it."

"You did what?!" Dandy yelled, as he'd been doing a lot of lately. "Ugh, never mind. No more yelling tonight...who is it?"

"I don't believe that's something you need to know, or worry about," Specter said, turning on the tip of their toe and walking toward the door. "I trust you've at least heard of the phrase 'I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you'?"

"You're not gonna...kill Niki Bracket, are you?" he asked, leaned forward against his desk.

"That's certainly not what you outlined in the job request," Specter said over their shoulder. "I'm a professional at this, Dandy. Let me handle this. You just worry about paying me for all three jobs."

The closing of the door was the heaviest sound Dandy had heard in years. He sat as his desk silently for a few moments before allowing himself to move again. Something about Specter just completely threw his sensibilities against the wall, and shook him to his core. It wasn't their killer fashion sense, or the perfectly pleasant tone in which they spoke of brutal violence, or their mysterious gender - lack thereof, perhaps was a better way to say it...something about them just clicked in such a way that he shivered and questioned why he had ever thought hiring a "troublemaker" from the darkest, most anonymous corners of the internet had ever been a good idea.

He shook his head and swallowed it. These latent thoughts of regret were something he thought he'd already come to terms with before even hiring. He'd already made peace with his intentions. He was fighting to protect what he had long ago claimed as rightfully his. There was no way some tiny, teeny upstart would horn in on the territory he'd carved out for himself over the past twenty years. This was his turf, he'd earned his monopoly as king of this hill.

...even if she was, admittedly, a better player at the ever-changing game than he was.

No, he told himself, gripping the arms of his chair for support. I'm the strong one here. I'm the one who's persevered all his life and got this far by my own volition. This is my race to run, and I'm gonna be the one crossing the finish line, no matter what.

No matter what...

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The darkness of sleep presided strong, blanketing all else from the view behind the eyelids. The brain was blind, fumbling forward in the middle ground between waking and sleeping, and all it could display was the lack of things to display. This only lasted a few minutes though, and the brain became bored and began pulling its own collection visual cues from the depths of memory, tossing them into a blender before spitting them back out haphazardly into a slideshow and calling it a dream.

The brain watched as the spectacle slowly unfolded, doing as the brain often does to convince the body that the slideshow was real and happening to it right at that moment.  
The blackness dissipated and flared into a faint blue morning skyscape. In front of that, a border of burnt orange rock shelves solidified and framed the scene. And just as they came into focus, so did a cracked, graying building of polished stone and rusting metal and arid, brittle wood planks.

Hands stretched out and fingers flipped themselves into horizontal L-shapes, holding themselves up against the scene like a filmmaker scoping a new shot. A feeling of satisfaction and familiarity welded itself into the spirit of the scene.

There were no other people in sight. This was a private show. Everything about the place suggested abandonment, failure, or something left incomplete. No one wanted this place anymore.

And then, in a flurry of quick cuts, time jerked forward. The floors were cleaned, all of the sawdust and cobwebs and mouse droppings were swept up, and there were men in overalls hauling tables through the front door. Light bulbs were replaced. Spliced cables started running along the walls and through tiny conduits in the floor. Life began to spring forth anew.

But then, one man with a can of bright white paint and a roller brush was waved off frantically, pushed back out the door. He pointed to the peeling, cracked walls, and he was shushed and hauled away. It seemed only the essentials were being restored, paint not among them.

Neither apparently were windows, air conditioning, or the water fountain in the hallway to the other rooms. The busted microwave in the break room was removed, but not replaced. The toilets in the bathrooms were scrubbed, but not fixed. Every inch of the premises was not so much restored as swept out and bandaged up.

Another quick cut changed the scene from offices to warehouses, where huge commercial ovens were installed by fat men with loose pants. The cupboards were stuffed and stocked with sugar and flour and cinnamon, and the big refrigerator was filled with eggs and butter and a vast array of liquidized flavorings and jellies and cream filling.

Whether they had always been there or whether they had snuck their way in around the edges, soon the room was filled with ragged, scruffy people, all gathered around the countertops and sinks. They were furiously whipping together ingredients in bowls, dabbling squishy blobs on to giant baking trays and sculpting them into appropriate shapes before sliding them into the ovens.

The entire floor was buzzing with activity, where only a short time before the whole place had been stark and abandoned and empty. Everything had come alive, even if not to its full potential, and color began pouring out the gray.

And that was where the dream started getting weird.

Workers started working harder and faster, much stronger than they should have any right to be, and they began making bigger and bigger candies. Individual pieces became the size of hands, the size of heads, and the size of the entire baking tray.

Huge chunks of pink peppermint swirl were combined and molded into one enormous blob, which the workers wrapped around the dreamer's body. They lifted her off the ground and pushed her feet into massive cookie straws. They delicately encased her waist with a foil cupcake wrapper. Her hands were plunged into a bucket full of pixie dust, which hardened around her fists as she pulled them out. A massive white gumball was hollowed out and carved like a jack-o-lantern, then placed over the dreamer's head.

Once her body had been completely covered in a veritable plethora of assorted candy, the workers all pulled dark hoods over their heads and stepped away in one united motion, to reveal a long wooden table, illuminated at the edges by candlelight. Lying atop it sat a massive, oversized candy cane, broken off at the hook, an enormous bucket of melted candy syrup, and a plastic mold in the familiar swirling shape of a lollipop.

Moving automatically, she placed the candy cane handle into the mold, locked it into place, then poured the rainbow syrup into the top, arranging the colors in the fashion she felt most suitable. The entire mold was then quickly shoved into the oven, where heat compressed it until it became very very hard.. Harder than any other candy she had ever made. Hard like diamonds. Hard like bedrock.

She grasped the candy cane handle with both hands, heaved, and rested the newly forged lollipop on her shoulder. The workers all turned to face her, bent at the knee, and bowed their heads in reverence.

"No," she finally spoke, breaking the silence of the dream. "Pretend I'm not here. Get back to work."

And just like that, she wasn't there. Everyone went back to work. And her brain ran headfirst into the brick wall of waking consciousness.


	10. Where Did This Lollipop Come From?

There was something in her mouth. Something hard. She ran her tongue over it curiously, trying to identify it without opening her eyes. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief when she tasted cherries and sugar.

Niki's eyes fluttered open and immediately focused themselves on a lollipop nearly the size of her fist in her mouth. Not that she wasn't glad for the pleasant taste of candy first thing in the morning to start her off on the right foot, but she felt strongly compelled to find out why and how she had woken up sucking on it.

Equally compelling was the fact that she realized there was something warm and probably alive in her hands. She could almost feel a heartbeat, in fact. It took several moments for her thoughts to catch up and process where she was and who that heartbeat might belong to.

"Good morning, Miss Niki."

Niki hummed to life and pushed herself up on her elbows. "Yeah...morning...I'm totally not...uh, was I?...gettin' a little comfy with you there?"

"No comfier than I've come to expect," Minnie said, turning herself over and pushing the hair from her face. "Though I will point out that my threshold for coziness is much higher than most others'."

"Oh god," Niki said, rubbing her eye and realizing their current state of dress. "Do I even wanna know?"

"Perhaps a mystery would better suit your active imagination," Minnie said in the most unapologetically plain voice she could use.

Niki swore there was a smirk hiding behind that poker face. She paused before responding, wondering if she could crack it open. "What I really want to know is where did this lollipop come from?"

"Perhaps you were a very good girl at the dentist's office," Minnie offered, sitting up.

"So you admit to probing around in my mouth?"

"Your tone suggested you wanted to get drilled."

"Well I'm just glad you chose to put the lollipop in my MOUTH."

"Surely it wouldn't have fit anywhere else, Miss Niki."

Niki gave up and hung her head, shoulders shaking with laughter. Minnie was simply unbreakable, and she would just have to accept that as fact.

She rolled the lollipop to the other side of her mouth and sat up straight again. It felt good to laugh; better than it should have. She hadn't felt this peaceful in months.

Her wandering eye got the better of her and took a roaming trip over Minnie's exposed skin. Her body was evenly coated in a deep orange color, lightly speckled like rust, but still smooth. Wrinkles had begun developing around the base of her neck and above her bust. There was a tiny mole at the base of her neck Niki had never seen before.

"I wasn't expecting modeling to be on my agenda for today," Minnie said, raising an eyebrow.

"They look like tiny chocolates," Niki replied, shaking her head to break away from staring.

"What does?"

"Your nips," she said, pointing. "They're just like little itty bitty titty chocolates! Look at 'em! Oh my god, I just had an idea. We start a line of tiny nipple-shaped chocolates, sell 'em to college kids as a gag gift! We'll call em...uh, we'll just call 'em exactly what they are: 'Nips'!"

"I'm fairly certain that's already a registered candy trademark."

"Oh come on, these'll be different!" she continued, further envisioning the idea in her head. "We can just add a tagline or something. 'Based on Minnie's boobs!' I'm fairly certain NOBODY has a registered candy trademark on those."

"No one except you, apparently."

"Not until you let me cover 'em in chocolate and make a nipple mold, I don't!"

"Miss Niki, I'm getting the feeling this fantasy is nothing more than a convoluted way of asking if you can lick my nipples."

Niki collapsed and fell back, laughing. "Okay okay, I give up! You win!" She coughed and pulled the lollipop out of her mouth to keep from choking. It took her nearly a minute to calm down.

"Okay, that was just...that was too much," she finally said, catching her breath. "God I needed to laugh like that."

"Always a pleasure to be of service," Minnie replied, taking the whole thing in relaxed stride.

"When are you ever NOT of service to me, Minnie?" Niki asked, all smiles. "You're so good to me."

"You know what flattery does to me, Miss Niki."

"But I'm serious," she said, placing a hand on Minnie's shoulder. "You of all people know best that I can be a very difficult and emotional person. You know that probably ten times better than anyone who isn't my own parents. And since the day I hired you, you've never let me down. You've never tried to cut me out or sell me under, hell, you've never even so much as raised your voice to me!"

She scooted closer, wrapping her arm behind Minnie's neck. "So I really mean it when I say 'you're so good to me.' You really are better than I deserve, Minnie. And I want you to know that I'm so damn thankful for you, and literally every single thing you do for me."

Minnie smiled and looked down at the blanket, unbelievably at a loss for words. Niki wondered if flattery really was her personal weakness. That, or perhaps their current mutual nudity had created some kind of awkwardness barrier preventing this conversation from growing into the full-fledged tender moment it could have been. Best to make a move before things got awkward...

She smiled and nodded, patting Minnie's shoulder once more and releasing her before anything else happened to destroy the mood. "Welp, alright then. I guess now's as good a time as any to attack the day, right?"

Staying out of sync for only approximately one second longer, Minnie returned quite automatically to her usual, efficient self. "I'll begin brewing some coffee right away."

"You can uh...you can put pants on, if you want to, first…" Niki said, watching her get right up.

"That is an entirely valid option," she replied, not looking back as she took approximately four steps across the room. "One I actively choose not to pursue until the coffee has begun brewing."

"As I said before, your house, your rules," she said, taking another moment to shamelessly admire her body while her back was turned. Minnie must have felt her staring though, and needlessly bent at the waist to grab something from the bottom shelf. Niki slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

She shuffled off to the bathroom to attend to bodily needs, and to put on her own clothes. When she returned in full attire, Minnie was also dressed, coffee and donuts had been set out on the table, and Minnie was already buried in her phone, shuffling schedules and sorting email.

"Wow, donuts?" Niki asked, taking her seat.

"Cherry-filled and glossy glazed, just as you like them."

"I do like them. You're legitimately perfect, Minnie!"

"Surely it's one reason you keep me around, Miss Niki."

Niki shook her head and smiled, taking a sip of perfect-temperature coffee. She knew she would be completely lost without her secretary, and that Minnie could probably replace her and do all of her work ten times as well. And yet, she remained here, working under Niki's leadership and wild ideologies. A dynamic duo comprised of spirit and logic, of madness and method. They balanced each other like opposites of a scale, their equilibrium poised to achieve great things.

Their next incredible feat would be reading their way through the oncoming deluge of email from the past two days.

"Miss Niki, which appointment would you prefer to attend? A statement to the nosy police or to the even nosier press?"

"Neither is important," Niki scoffed. "The press aren't gonna be one bit helpful, and they'll just make public whatever I tell the police anyway. And to be quite honest, the police will only get in my way. There are much quicker ways to accomplish our lofty goals."

"I'll negotiate for a reschedule on both."

"Hey, listen to this," Niki said, flicking away incoming message notifications like mosquitoes. "Sounds like Bill Steckler picked up the leftover sales that rat Brian had been working on. And he somehow managed to reel in a huge sale of his own? That sure is conven--wait a minute...what the hell??"

Minnie looked up. This was bound to be important.

"He sold...all of the remaining stock that wasn't damaged?" Niki read on, confused and slightly alarmed. "How the hell did he swing that? He sold our back stock of ready-  
made boxes...and he sold our stock ingredients too?! What the FUCK?!"

She slammed her phone down on the table and stood up. "He sold our own stock?! What the hell is he thinking?! How are we going to maintain production now? What are all the warehouse employees going to do to make up for the time we've already lost if they have no stock? And how are we going to meet the incoming daily sales if we have no packaged product to work with?!"

"He must have seen an opening after what happened to Kristen," Minnie said, piecing the picture together.

"What? What's that got to do with anything?"

"Kristen managed warehouse logistics," Minnie explained. "Without her to regulate inventory, Bill could have forced an order through the system on his own. Or perhaps Brian already had this deal lined up in advance and Bill took it over unwittingly."

"A shark only gives birth to other sharks," Niki muttered, grimly. "Brian probably buttered up his team with his usual brand of bottom-dollar assholery, and Bill took the bait like the sucker he is."

"It will be difficult to convince you otherwise until you've squeeze the words from Bill's mouth."

"God, this is gonna be a nightmare and a half," Niki continued, putting her head in her palm. "I don't even know if that's something we can just clean up, you know? Not having any stock leaves the grunts with nothing to do, and if there's nothing in our stock, the sales guys won't have anything they can sell anyway!"

"If I know anything about sales, they will find a way to sell more product nonetheless to recoup losses."

"What are they going to do sell invisible boxes of chocolate?"

"I'll explain in detail so you can properly derail the idea better with your unique brand of business religion," Minnie continued. "The sales associates can accept orders for any product and push the expected ship dates out by a few days until we can actually get the product back in stock. This is a very common tactic used among major vendors to secure payment on future orders."

"It's dishonest is what it is," Niki said sharply. "You start selling invisible product, you sell the idea that you're only interested in securing the customer's money first and foremost. We're a candy business, Minnie, not a collection agency!"

"Dishonest may not be the dictionary definition of it, Miss Niki, but if it's your definition of it, then I promise to respect that."

"I DO think it's dishonest! I'm straight-up repulsed by the idea of corporate profit, you know that! And I'm not gonna pitch my whole company around the idea of just making more money. Even if that is what every single sales handbook written by every white-haired old duff in a business suit says you're supposed to do!"

"I built this company on simple ideologies," Niki said, counting them on her fingers. "I enjoy making candy, other people enjoy eating the candy I make, and as a business entrepreneur, I can use these elements to create jobs for people who can't get them elsewhere."

"Put simply, you're a true hero, misunderstood in your own time."

"But these sales guys don't get that, Minnie," she concluded, throwing her hands back down on the table and taking another sip of coffee. "The only thing those stodgy old white-hairs know is how to capitalize the M in money. In everything they do, they're out to get both the top and bottom dollar. That's all they've learned. That's the only way they know how to label a company as a success or a failure."

Minnie nodded silently, disregarding the incoming notifications as she listened intently.

"And even though I've been fighting it knife and fork for years now, I think I may have to just swallow my gum and face the facts on this one," she said glumly, looking up into Minnie's eyes. "...I just don't know how to fight it anymore."

"You've been fighting an uphill battle all this time, Miss Niki," Minnie said, placing a hand over hers. "And though people often don't understand that, you can't become discouraged like this."

"I can too," she replied, head hung low. "This whole thing is just...bigger than I am, Minnie! I set out to beat the system years ago, nothing more than a cocky teenager with notions of superiority to prove. And I know it worked for a while. People saw the good in what I was doing, people wanted to help. It was easy to accomplish what I'd set out for."

"And now it's causing you all kinds of problems," Minnie said, drawing the remaining conclusions. "Because this is the first time people have tried to cut you down instead of build you up."

"That's the short and sweet of it, yeah," Niki sighed. "I guess my crazy radical ideas of NOT boiling everything down to a dollar figure were just too much of a threat to the holy practice of...boiling everything down to a dollar figure."

"Heaven forbid anyone in this country focus on something else."

"Not 'anyone', Minnie," she said, adding a single degree of confidence back to her voice. "There's a very specific subset of people who do that. They just happen to be the ones in charge of writing the recipe book."

"...ah, you're still convinced Dandy is somehow involved in all of this."

"Who else would stand to benefit from tearing me down more than a greed-pot lip-smacker like him?" She spun her phone around on the table as she spoke. "He's already got a clusterfudge of money to do anything he pleases with, and I'm standing in his way of making MORE. He doesn't want word getting out that he's jealous, so he hires some funny-talkin' psycho in a fumigation suit to come burn me down, no matter if innocents get in the way or not! Is that really such a crazy thing to believe?"

Minnie was silent for a moment, processing and sorting the information before spitting out a straight-faced response. "All of the motives seem to add up, with the exception of Dandy knowing someone heartless enough to commit the atrocities."

"He made a deal with Candy Satan, wished me dead, and had enough money that he nor anyone else would need to think even for a moment about the consequences," Niki said, a bit vacantly.

"In the interest of further indulging your surprisingly plausible hunch," Minnie said, pushing her buzzing phone aside to make full eye contact, "What will the consequences of Dandy's actions be?"

"...what do you mean?"

"The perpetrator of this crime will undoubtedly face justice, if I know anything about you, Miss Niki," Minnie continued, light shining off her glasses in eerie rays. "How do you intend to ensure these consequences will come to fruition?"

Niki stopped and slowly turned her head to face Minnie. There was a certain spark of energy crackling in her eyes, the thrill of impending vengeance. It brought a sly smile to her face as the energy began flowing through her body again. She would bring vengeance, if only for her own secretary's...no, her best friend's sake.

"Minnie," she said in the most dead serious, Minnie-esque tone she could muster, "Do you think, with all of your cleverness and logical thinking and organizational prowess, that you could successfully cover up a murder?"

Without breaking eye contact, barely pausing longer than the second it took her to evaluate and moralize the scenario in her head, she responded, in the same deadpan manner, "Yes, I believe I probably could."

Niki continued her stare, bones buzzing with a newfound energy. "You know I trust you in just about every conceivable aspect of my life. From running my business to letting me sleep in your bed to telling you about my deepest fears and aspirations and plots for revenge."

"I pride myself on being privy to all of that, Miss Niki."

"And if I know anything at all about you," she continued, moving closer, "You probably already know what I'm about to tell you, but I'm going to tell you anyway."

"I promise I'll act completely shocked just the same."

"The thing is," she said, taking a deep breath. "You're absolutely right, I can't let something like this get me down. No matter how terrible things get for me, my only choice is to keep fighting this battle. I've always known that I can win if I just fight hard enough, right?"

"My company is dying," she continued, clenching a fist. "And it'll continue dying as long as people like Dandy have the money to pay for its destruction. So if I'm going to dole out some proper justice, I'm going to have to hit Dandy where it hurts."

"Presumably, his wallet?"

"Not quite," the grin finally emerged as Niki leaned in close, inches from Minnie's face. "Let's just say that if Dandy wants to up the stakes with violence, then maybe I should return the favor. I might just happen to know a certain 'urban legend' with a penchant for physical punishment...".


	11. Heathens

This was not right.

She could feel it in her gut, in her bones, in every molecule of her being. Everything about this was wrong. This was a violation of her beliefs. This was a perversion of her religion. This was the last time she'd sell out her own spirituality just to pay the bills.

Murdering people wasn't the bad part. People were just people. If one were to suddenly die, there would still be plenty more people to take their place. Once you realized there would always be another just like them, you learned how to not get attached to them, and it honestly became hard to care if they died. Human beings were simply replaceable.

And besides, you couldn't kill their souls. She believed...no, she KNEW that everything a person ever was or could have been was stored in their soul - an intangible, immortal piece of wispy floating ether that could never be destroyed. Not even with bullets. Not even with laser surgery extraction.

Not even with fire.

Candace shook the ashes from her hair and stuffed the remainder of her chili dog into her mouth. If souls didn't die, then people didn't really die either, and that was the period at the end of the sentence for all she cared. Right now it was more important to focus on the task at hand anyway, rather than weigh mortality against morality.

She hadn't been pleased at all with this new assignment. Her client had already struck a nerve with the previous job, and was now paying for jobs that no longer felt right. Sparking a fire was a sacred and very personal act, not something to brazenly flaunt in the eye of the public. And fire was no animal to be caged, for the sheer amusement of those who would watch it dance.

She sighed loudly, smelling the hot onion on her breath. She yearned for simpler days, when she could just freely spark up and watch the spectacle come to life on its own. Back when she didn't need to compromise such sacraments for the sake of money.

What if I didn't need the nutrients of money anymore? she wondered, idly flicking the ignition of the lighter in her hand. What if I dropped my everything where it is and just walked forever in one direction until destiny caught up with me? Live from the land, take where it gives, and forget the world of civilization and people and contracts. What a life that could be…

She smacked her lips. A life without plumbing? A life without convenience store matches and collectible lighters? A life without chili dogs?

...unacceptable.

She took a deep breath, cracked her neck, let out a low belch, and stretched her fingers. Just go and do it and get paid with dollars, she told herself through grit teeth. You aren't required to enjoy it. But you must get it done, if only for the pursuit of the money you need for chili dogs. The fire must understand.

She hobbled her way up to her feet and hoisted the backpack over her shoulders. She did her best to step lightly, inasmuch as one could step lightly on a shingled rooftop without losing balance, and checked the mechanics on her gear. If they wanted a controlled slow burn, she decided she may as well make the best of it.

She stepped down into the partition between the two rooftop ledges and centered herself, looking out over the pleasant suburban sunrise peeking above the horizons of the adjacent houses. A burning light so pure, the likes of which she could not achieve here and now. The very thought angered her, and she pulled the trigger with a scoff, a small half-circle blazing up in front of her. She sat back down with a loud thump and watched as the flames began their life of crime, melting and charring the wood beneath them.

Just watching the fire dance was enough to put her mind at ease. At least for now…

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Why is it screaming?" Niki shouted, covering her ears. "Does it need new batteries?"

"I think it may be serious this time, Miss Niki," Minnie said, pressing the reset button in vain. "And in light of recent events, this should come as no surprise to either of us."

Niki took a moment to process the words. "...this place is on fire??"

Minnie nodded as she scooped up her phone and tablet, yanking their respective chargers out of the wall outlets and stuffing them in her pockets. She then quickly shuffled over to the door and stepped outside into the morning light. Niki crammed the donut into her mouth and followed right behind her.

Turning around, they could see that yes, the house was definitely burning. Minnie's fingers were already dialing the fire department, by now added directly to her contacts. Niki looked closer at the flames, clearly seeing the distinct outline of a person. A familiar person.

"...Candace!" she growled.

The silhouetted figure raised a hand in greeting.

"How did you find me?!" Niki demanded, hands instantly coiling into fists before she realized she wasn't in costume. "Are you stalking me?!"

"I notice you've already met our infernal antagonist," Minnie said pointedly as she navigated through the fire department's automated menu system.

"Well, yeah...I, uh...I mean..." she stammered before regaining her composure. "Fudge, I was gonna tell you eventually. I've definitely met her before."

"If I left you alive to remember me later, I would remember you as well," Candace said from her perch. "Who are you?"

"I'm Lollyhamma!" she blurted out, half to Candace and half to Minnie. "You mean you didn't recognize my voice? We just met yesterday, for god's sake!"

"Not my job to remember targets," she muttered in response. "The only important target is the one in front of my eyes."

"Lollyhamma? You?" Minnie replied, eyebrow raised.

"Yep, all me! Surprised?"

"It would be a challenge to describe my exact level of shock," she said in an unbelievably plain tone, lightly tinted around the edges with the sound a smirk makes.

"God dammit Minnie, nothing gets by you."

"Doesn't matter who you are anyway," Candace added with a shrug. "Fire does not judge character."

"Gonna be a little hard to incinerate me from way up there, don't you think?" Niki said, taking another step back. "I've clearly got the advantage down here, if I were to, say, get away in a hurry…".

"Don't care."

Niki glared up at her, confused. This was not the expected villain protocol. What was Candace scheming at here? Was this some kind of mind game tactic? A taunt? Did she really just not care, despite following her all the way out here and setting fire to the place?

"Miss Niki," Minnie said, hanging up the phone, "If you are the urban legend vigilante Lollyhamma, now would be the ideal time to attack the villain setting fire to my house."

"Easier said than done," she replied, biting her lip as she recalled the previous fight. "I don't just shout a peppy catch phrase and flash-bang into my armor, y'know!"

"Do you need to run home and change?"

"Actually I, uh...the armor's actually right here. I kinda stashed it in your car around the time I came over yesterday. Didn't think you'd mind, considering."

"I don't. Please get into costume quickly, Miss Niki."

"Alright alright, just gotta get my hands on the junk in your trunk."

"Plenty of time for shenanigans later, Miss Niki, when my house isn't burning."

"I'M GOING, JEEZ!"

Minutes later, she had finally gotten suited up and stepped out from behind the car again. The fires had spread to each corner of the roof, miraculously not yet touching either roof of the adjacent houses. Candace hadn't moved, nor had the fire gotten to her. She seemed more laidback than ever, contentedly watching the flames as they flickered about.

Minnie turned around upon hearing the car door shut, and hung up the phone again. "Miss Ni--I mean, Lollyhamma...please go and punch the arsonist on my roof directly in the face. The fire truck en route seems to be encumbered by traffic and my house will most likely collapse if nothing is done shortly."

"On it!" Lolly shouted as she leapt forward. And nearly crashed face-first as she realized she'd never restocked on explosive charges.

She scrambled to her feet again, quickly scanning for a convenient way to get higher as she ran across the lawn. She clambered her way up the drain pipe on the side of the neighboring house to hoist herself up to the roof.

She dropped the visor on her helmet, grabbed the mighty candy cane handle of her weapon from her back, deftly twirled it between her giant candy gauntlets, and struck a menacing pose. Only then did she realize it was still shattered. She decided to just roll with it anyway.

"Remember me now?" she hissed.

"Yeah," Candace said, unimpressed.

"Well…" she paused, having honestly expected more of a response. "...I'm...gonna finish what I started with you!"

"I would wish you good luck in your pursuit," she replied, rolling her head to one side, "But we know your words are hollow like a drum."

"The hell does that mean?"

"Means I'm not moving."

Lolly sighed and shook her head. "You never make any sense when you talk. Why can't you just make sense?"

Candace shrugged.

"And how are you not on fire?"

"The flames trust their mother," she said with a half-smile. "I brought them into this world, introduced them to the breath of life, and they imprinted on my face, and will now never harm me…".

"...are you serious?"

"Of course not!" Candace said, cackling. "What kind of stupid drivel is that I just made up? HA! I am rich!"

"Fine, whatever!" Lolly tightened her grip on the hammer...or spear, as it more currently resembled. "I'm still gonna smash you into bite-sized pieces!"

"Please and thank you, Miss Niki," Minnie added from below.

"You can't do it," came Candace's reply as she pointed the nozzle at Lolly's face. "I'd burn your cookie before you got close enough to strike."

Lolly paused, grinding her teeth as she tried to keep a steady menace going. Candace was right though. If their previous encounter was any indication, she wouldn't be able to land a blow without getting scorched. It was a wonder Candace wasn't already blasting her, point-blank.

"I don't even want to fight today," Candace continued. "Let's use words, like bigger people."

Lolly raised a finger to protest, halted, then deflated and hung limp. She turned back down toward Minnie, who was once again hanging up the phone. "Minnie, I really don't have a choice but to play by her rules here. I can't punch her in the face like you asked. She's got me by the gumballs."

"For perhaps the first time ever, I think my foresight may have been blinded by these pressing circumstance, Miss...Lolly," Minnie said, taking a calming breath. "I pushed you into a no-win situation without fully considering the risks and limitations involved, mainly because my house and by extension all of my acquired possessions are currently being cremated right before my eyes."

"Not sorry about that, just to mention," Candace added.

"Of course you're not," Lolly grumbled. "Alright then, let's...talk. First question, why the hell are you here?"

"Client says go out and start a fire here, or there, that's where I go and usher them into this world," she answered, trailing her gloved hand through the tips of the nearest flame.

"So, your client…?".

"Not my job to drop names," she said, a frown developing on her face.

"Figured as much," Lolly said with a sigh. "What CAN you tell me?"

"Ask me anything about fire," Candace said with a snicker.

Lolly mouthed several silent expletives before taking a deep breath, coughing out the smoke, and sitting down. "Alright, let's play your game, just for kicks. Tell me why you're an arsonist, Candace. Do you just do it for the money? Because you're a murderer psychopath? Or are you some kind of genuine pyromaniac?"

"Probably all of them, yes," she answered with a nod. "Also more than that. It's a very personal thing to me. Fire is so much more than property damage and assassination and destroying evidence. Fire is alive...".

She sat up straight and placed her hands on either side of the blaze in front of her. "See it dancing? See it swaying when the wind sneezes? Feel its heartbeat. It's radiating life and light and heat and energy...you ask me why I devote my life to arson? It's to witness the miracle of life in fire and flame."

Lolly just stared, her face contorting as she tried to make sense of it. "...miracle of life?" she scoffed. "Murdering and melting the faces off of innocent people is more like a miracle of DEATH, if you ask me."

"Yes, and that too," Candace said in agreement. "Fire is the living death. Once the life is burnt to a crisp, into tiny ashes, it becomes the dust for the next soul. It's all one big cycle, like everything else!"

There was a long silence as Lolly let the words hover around her head before they dissipated. The subtle roar and pop of the flames filled the empty spaces in her thoughts, until she finally shook herself out of it and stamped her foot angrily. "What in the HELL are you babbling about?!"

"Ugh, this is why I don't ever discuss religion," Candace groaned. "Heathens will never understand…".

"Fine, forget it then," Niki said, brushing it away.

"Even my employers don't understand," she continued anyway, her voice growing bitter. "They ask me to do these things because they think I am like them, doing the dirty laundry for the reward of dirty money. Their god of money is not like my god of fire. They don't understand. They are, for a lack of better words, heathens."

"I don't think you are correctly defining 'heathens'," Minnie said, matter-of-factly. "But seeing as you are no doubt ignoring us at the moment, do carry on with your line of thought."

"You know what," Candace said, raising her voice over Minnie's. "I did not even want to do this job. They told me to burn only this house. They told me to CONTAIN the fire, to restrict it. What kind of life is a fire without freedom to burn as it desires? Where is the passion and beauty in a flame that consumes only what it is told to? There is no marvel in that! No grace! It's a shameful arrogance to the glory of life!"

She kicked her boot against the roof, busting a large hole in the ceiling. "So you know what? Fuck them. What do you want to know? I don't care if you want revenge on them or whatever you do. They will pay me for my job and I will not speak again to these heathen motherfuckers."

Lolly glanced down a Minnie, who raised an eyebrow and quickly checked her phone again, then looked back to Candace. "...you're serious now?"

"Serious always."

"...o-okay then," Lolly said, eyeing her suspiciously as she slowly sat down on the non-flaming rooftop. "So...who are you working for?"

"They don't say names," she replied with a shrug. "They found me and approached with a scrap contract, told me where the fire should start. In your factory building, in the depth of night. That was the good job."

"No, it wasn't!" Lolly snarled. "That was a very shitty thing you did!" 

"Debate it with my foot as it crushes your face," she said dismissively. "Anyway, that employer is only a middle between two ends."

"A middle? You mean, someone hired your employer to hire you?"

"That is what they normally do."

Lolly frowned. "Sounds like extra hassle."

"You say this, but you in yourself employ her as a middle," Candace said, pointing to Minnie. "So don't tell me that like you are absolved of your own hypocrisy."

Niki opened her mouth to protest, then decided it wasn't worth it and begrudgingly moved on. "Fine. So what CAN you tell me about the organization who hired you?"

"No organization, just them," she answered flatly.

"Yeah, them. More than one."

"No," Candace said firmly, pointing the nozzle at her again. "Them singular. Like how you are she and your middle girlfriend down there is she. The one employer is they."

"FINE! God I'm getting tired of your weird obtuseness," Niki grumbled. "Okay. So. What can you tell me about THEM?"

"Sharp sense of style, business suit of green, maybe blue, fancy hat, very good at hiding their face."

"Great, that tells me all of nothing," Niki said with a heavy sigh. "And you probably have no idea who hired this middle person, do you?"

"Don't care anyway," Candace answered. "They have the money to pay me, why should I care what their name is?"

"You sound just like a friggin' businessman," Niki said, shaking her head disdainfully. "All you really care about in the end is the money."

"How dare you say those words!" Candace shouted, firing a blast of flames in her direction. Niki dropped to all fours just in time to dodge it. "Even after I've explained the magic that fire is to me, you insult my face to tell me there's no split between the heartless suit-stuffers and my very core religion? Disgusting!"

"Watch it, or I swear to god I'll beat your face into a mushy pulp!" Lolly growled, arming herself again. "I mean, you literally just said you don't care who they are as long as they have money to pay you with. And that's exactly the sort of thing those capitalist sharks say!"

"Money is money," she replied, levelly. "I can stoke my religion with as much faith as the heart will burn, but even that will not pay for my food."

Lolly snorted, but didn't respond.

"And what of you, then?" Candace continued. "You wear the same business suit you mock, under that swirl candy armor. Don't you too do your work for money?"

"That's different!" she spit out automatically. "I run a business to provide jobs for others, and I hardly pocket any more of the money for myself than I need! That's how I've been undermining the system all these years! I'm the subversion of expected capitalism!"

"Yes yes, that is religion. You understand it now."

"I don't, really, but I AM tired of talking about that," she said, almost easing up a bit before reminding herself that Minnie's house was still burning right in front of her face.

"So let me just breathe for a second here and recap everything you've just told me…" she added as she turned her head away from the smoke, lifted her visor, and took a deep breath of non-tainted air. "You're a traveling arsonist for hire, some snazzy enigmatic mystery person hired you off the grid to lay waste to my warehouses, but someone ELSE hired THEM, and you're just going along with it because arson is like your holy religion anyway and starting fires just happens to pay whatever bills a nomadic pyromaniac cultist might have?"

"Yeah."

Lolly took a moment to absorb all of this, both as herself and as Niki. The overpowering smell of smoke filled her head though, clouding her thoughts with smoke and grime. Everything she knew felt thick and murky now.

Even amidst the smoke though, a glimmer of realization had begun shining through. Sitting before her was a woman doing something she truly loved and believed in, for money she needed, no matter if other people got hurt in the process. In that way, she was not unlike every other sales manager Niki had ever known. But she was also not entirely unlike Niki herself.

...except Lollyhamma had never killed anyone. Injured, hospitalized, mentally scarred, physically incapacitated, sure. But never to the point of actual death. Not yet, anyway... she still hadn't exactly purged her mind of the thought either.

"You know something, Candace?" she finally said, slowly straightening her spine again, "You're just doing your job, aren't you?"  
Candace raised an eyebrow as another large chunk of roof caved in beneath her.

"You're just burning things because you have this weird personal devotion to setting things on fire, which people happen to pay you for," Lolly continued, in more of a Niki tone of voice. "You're just doing your thing. It happens to be very negatively affecting me personally, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're my enemy, now, does it?"

"I am as much your enemy as your desire is to bash in my skull with that candy stick," Candace replied, brushing her upper lip.

"Exactly! If I'm not out to hurt you, you're not gonna kill me, right?"

"That's the words I said."

"Then I guess I'm not gonna fight you," Lolly said, relaxing her grip on her weapon. "Because there's a bigger enemy I should be focusing on. You're just the chocolate coating on the outside. Your boss is the nougat filling I'm really craving right now."

She threw her visor up and jumped down to the ground, landing with a heavy thump. She rose to her feet again and looked over to Minnie, who only stared blankly at the fire as it continued to eat its way down the walls of her tiny house.

"Minnie," Lolly said with a sigh, "I'm sorry about your house. There's literally nothing I can do to help you now."

"It may take my brain a certain time to process all of this, Miss Niki," Minnie said automatically, her tone reserved, cool, but not entirely collected. "But rest assured that I will find a way to accept it and move on, given a degree of peace."

"That...really doesn't put me any more at ease, Minnie…" she said, failure sinking in and feeling not unlike the blow of a giant lollipop hammer to the stomach. "...but I guess this isn't really the time to be concerned with my own feelings, now is it?"

"Your feelings are as valid as mine, Miss Niki. After all, your own life was attempted on here as well, was it not?"

"Still not sorry," Candace added, her own little parcel of roof amazingly still not caved in or on fire yet.

"Minnie please," Lolly said, shaking her head. "You are entirely too good to me. It shouldn't be possible to be this understanding and patient. You're just...so much more than I'll ever deserve…".

Minnie finally turned to look away from the house. "Miss Lolly-Niki, I would like to advise you on a course of action that I think will benefit all parties present at this time."

Lolly glanced over at her hopefully.

"Please shut up."

She paused, then hung her head in surrender.

"We have pressing decisions that would better serve us if made immediately, and I guarantee I'll be more receptive to the wiles of your infamous flattery after we have made it to some relative degree of safety."

A defeated half-smile finally cracked on Niki's face as she looked up. "...looks like you're right again, Minnie. And when are you ever anything less than that?"

"Pigs have a greater chance of achieving flight than I do of giving you bad advice, Miss Niki."

"Don't I know it," she said, letting the smile spread further. "Alright then, time to make a decision? An on-the-spot decision that could radically alter my immediate future and thereby have a direct impact on you and probably smug asshole Candace up there as well? Hah, talk about no pressure, right?"

"As you may recall me telling you last night, there is no unspoken law forcing you to make such a decision at this exact moment in time."

"That you did, Minnie," she said, cracking her neck. "But you know how it is with me and life-altering decisions. I either listen to my gooey chocolate center and go with whatever pops up first, or I'll just roll the dice and let chance do the talking."

Minnie nodded, having expected this. "As it has always been, so shall it always be."

"Gay," Candace interjected, from behind her wall of fire.

"Right," Niki said, ignoring that remark and flexing her fingers within their gauntlets. "So, time to make my first proper company announcement since the first fire."  
Minnie had already begun composing a new email, thumbs poised to begin dictation.

"First thing's first...Knickknack Snacks is officially dead," Niki said, with some degree of gravity. "Someone, not to name names, wanted it completely gone, wiped off the candy business grid altogether, and literally paid to have it burnt out of existence. Our pyromaniac friend may as well burn the rest of the place while she's at it, it's gone forever as far as I'm concerned."

"It would indeed be extremely difficult to rebuild the company with virtually no stock and our biggest competitors already having full access to private recipes," Minnie agreed.

"Why do you say it's erased forever?" Candace again interrupted, snuffing out a patch of fire that had leapt over to an adjacent rooftop. "You think your factory was permanent, a thing that would have remained forever immortal if not consumed by fire."

"You're speaking in riddles again Candace," Niki said, half-ignoring her.

"And still you only hear them through leather ears, you heathen!" she grumbled in response. "You say your company is gone forever, but it's not a forever thing. It was temporary. You still stand here, alive, so go and take your temporary company with you!"

Niki only stared back with an expression of curious bemusement.

"Did you never study basic science?" Candace groaned loudly. "Matter is never created nor destroyed, only transformed! There is no beginning and end, only a transformation into something new! Ugh, you surely at least know the familiar children's fable about the Phoenix bird, do you?"

"Of course," Niki said, getting impatient.

"Then live the story!" Candace shouted, waving her flamethrower around. "Let your company die in peace, scatter its ashes, and let them fertilize the earth. Leave the grave in peace, and call the phoenix when the time of rebirth has arrived!"

She left the words hanging for a moment in hopes the message would seep through and bear fruit to understanding. Niki allowed herself to ponder them for a moment before responding.

"That sounds easy enough…if you're religious, anyway. But you should know by now that I'm not very good at following your...unique brand of holiness. So I'm gonna have to give up on this one. I don't understand how the hell you think I can bring this company back after all you and your employer have done to it."

"People like you do this every time," Candace grumbled, spitting. "Heathen motherfuckers, all of you."

Shrugging her off, Niki turned back to her favorite secretary. "So Minnie, remember earlier when I asked if you could sufficiently cover up a murder?"

"In the privacy of my former house, out of the public earshot of eavesdropping neighbors, yes," Minnie replied, glancing around warily.

"Well, I do believe I'm ready to explore that conversation in greater detail now," Niki continued, glancing back up at Candace, miraculously still sitting unscorched on a tiny parcel of roof up above. "Don't worry, it's got nothing to do with YOU."

Candace responded with the flash of a peace sign, mostly obscured by the huge cloud of smoke forming around her.

"Looks like you're well on your way to your own demise anyhow," she added, eyeing the flames as they continued to eat their way down the walls, melting away Minnie's possessions. "No matter, we've got bigger waffles to burn anyway...".

With that, she began marching her way back toward the car. "Hope you're still coming with me Red Velvet, 'cause I'm gonna need to borrow your ride."

"Considering every other place I might be at this time of day has more or less been burned to a crisp, there's no reason for me to NOT follow you, Miss Niki." Minnie turned impeccably on her heel and swept her way around to the driver's side of the car.

Lollyhamma tossed her candy weapon in the back seat and poked her head over the roof of the car. "What, you're not gonna let me drive?"

"Pigs have a greater chance of achieving flight than I do of allowing you to drive my car, Miss Niki."


	12. I'll Be Taking My Business Elsewhere

"So...that's finally it, then?" Dandy said, nervously biting his lip.

"The last job appears to have been completed to the fullest ability I can demonstrate," came the reply, complete with a sly, shadowy grin. "Fire once again proves to be the most effective device for stirring up trouble...and shutting it down as well."

"That's well and good," he said with a relieved sigh. "And most importantly, you're absolutely, professionally positive that none of this will ever link back to me?"

"Oh come on now," Specter crooned. "I'm hurt, Dandy. We had this same exact conversation already, when I explained to you what a marvelous and wonderful evidence disposal tool fire can be. Is it suspicious? Certainly! But without a trace of evidence or even a hint of a clue, tracking down a responsible party becomes too big a task for a police department with too much on their plate anyway."

Dandy nodded in acceptance, but couldn't stop fidgeting. Restless leg syndrome may have been setting in, or maybe he still felt a certain guilted weight behind his actions that he might never overcome.

"So with that," Specter continued with a slight bow, "I thank you for your business, Dandy Candy man. I hope it doesn't come off as rude, but I do hope I won't see you for further business in the future. Future business often implies that I didn't do my job well enough the first time. Surely a distinguished businessman like yourself can understand the pride I take in my line of work."

Dandy smiled, then looked away, then frowned, then shrugged and smiled again. "Great. Good, yes. Well. The money's all there, as I'm sure you've already made note of. And uh, great, yeah. Have a fantastic day, doing whatever else it is you do."

Specter's shark-like grin seemed to leave a permanent afterimage on his brain, even after they had turned around, waving off with their black-gloved hand. Dandy really had to hand it to them for maintaining such a consistent level of foreboding, menacing presence, on top of being punctual, organized, and, above all, unexpectedly polite.

All of which was the exact opposite for someone like Lollyhamma, who at that very moment, abruptly burst her way into the room, candy corn shoulder pad first, through the exact same window that had only just been repaired from her previous intrusion the other day, all right as the door trailing behind Specter's personal bodyguards had just come to a close.

"Oh my GOD, not you again!"

"What's the matter Dandy, ya miss me?" she said gruffly, cracking her neck as she stood up to full height again.

"How can I ever miss you if you never go away?" Dandy grumbled, looking around futilely for something weapon-like he could clutch tightly and pretend would allay his immediate fears of being maimed by a certain blunt but exceptionally sweet object.

"Funny you should mention that," Lolly said, rolling her shoulder. "But first thing's first, we've got a very important 12:30 appointment, which I think just started 45 seconds ago."

Dandy could almost visibly see the contempt radiating from the scowl on her face as she approached. He tried not to shrink in his chair, but he was already feeling still quite shaken and stirred from his encounter with Specter, and the only thing he wanted anymore was for all of this to be over.

He hoped to highest heaven that his current expression wasn't revealing any of this.

Lolly hopped up and took and seat on the edge of his desk, her cupcake wrapper skirt making crinkling noises whenever she leaned or stretched. Her hard peppermint boots clacked and thudded as they swung lazily against the legs of the table.

"Tell me about yourself, Dandy," she said, clearly enunciating each syllable above otherwise gritted teeth.

For a moment he didn't say anything, nervously looking her over as he tried to decide whether her oversized but apparently broken weapon or her candy heart gauntlet fists would cause him more pain should she become agitated. He felt his ears go red as he realized she was sitting with her legs apart and his attention quickly shot back up into her glaring eyes.

"...a-about myself?" he finally sputtered. "What do you mean?"

"I don't seem to know as much about you as you do about me," she continued. "So why don't you fill me in a little? Tell me about the real Candy Dandy who's been causing so much trouble around here."

"Causing trouble?" he repeated, shaking his head. "I haven't been causing any trouble!"

"You haven't?" she said, cracking her knuckles through the candy gloves. "Then who has?"

"It was all Specter!" he almost blurted out, but managed to restrain himself from saying. "I...I don't know what you're talking about!"

"The fires, ding dong!"

"I've already told you, I had nothing to do with those fires!" he insisted, crossing his arms. "The police haven't even released the investigation details on them yet, so I have no idea why you're trying to pin them on ME, like it was some kind of planned arson or something! I've been sitting right here in my chair all day, all week! Now why don't YOU get your ass off of my new desk and scoot the hell out of my office?!"

"You're awfully jumpy for someone who's supposedly innocent," Lolly said, reaching back for the spear, as she'd taken to calling it now. "So I'm gonna make an educated guess that you're actually NOT as sweet a guy as the disgusting candy you produce."

"Don't you lecture me about being sweet and innocent!" he shouted. "You've broken my windows, assaulted me in broad daylight and threatened me god knows how many times now! You're no shining example of righteousness, NIKI BRACKET."

The room was silent for a moment, save for the sound of increasing tension.

"Oh, don't act surprised," he continued, rolling his eyes. "Everybody knows it's you in there, it couldn't be more obvious. You're an open book, Lolly!"

Her eyes never left him as she pulled the spear from its clip on her back. "...alright, and what if I am? Is that going to stop me from driving this spear right through your midsection if I so wanted to?"

"You won't skewer me," he sneered. "You don't have the balls to kill!"

"Probably in your best interest not to test that right now," she growled. "My company's been reduced to ashes, my secretary's house went up in smoke, and my patience is all burned out. I've had everything I've worked for and more taken away from me in mere days, to the point where I've got very little left to lose. Do not try me."

"It doesn't feel very great to have everything you've built up snatched away from you, does it?" Dandy snapped back. "Doesn't feel very great havin' some teenybopper upstart muscle in on your own home turf, show you up and chip away at everything you've spent the better part of your life cultivating, either!"

"Chipped away?" she shrieked, jumping off the desk and shoving her helmeted face into his as she clenched the armrests of his chair. "You DESTROYED my company! You had it BURNED to the ground and its ashes sent to the four fucking winds!"

"I didn't burn it down, Niki," he said, dropping into a calmer, more condescending tone. "I've told you that nearly a dozen times now."

"You're lying," she muttered, not pulling away.

"But you know what," he said, drawing a deep breath. "As long as we're being open and honest here, about this whole you being Lollyhammer thing, let's just take a moment, tone down the violence, and use words instead? Why don't we have a little heart-to-heart?"

"I'm tired of talking," she responded, blocking him in his chair. "I'm tired of waiting, watching, planning and compromising. I'm DONE talking!"

"Now just listen for one second here!" he insisted, brushing her arms aside and slipping out of her grasp. "You might want to know that while I still didn't start those fires, there IS something I have done, and there is still something YOU can do. Hear me out, if you will."

"I don't want to hear your honeyed words," she hissed, spear at the ready. "I'm not here for any more of your two-faced bullshit!"

Dandy pressed a button on his phone. "Hey, would you step into my office for a moment? Thanks."

Lolly snorted. "More security goons? Bring 'em on. I'm more than ready to send 'em all to intensive care without so much as a second thought!"

"Actually, no," Dandy said, straightening his tie. "I told you already, I'd rather talk than get anyone's hands dirty. Talking accomplishes things."

"Yeah, it accomplishes pissing me off and getting me violent."

"Miss Bracket," he continued, almost making it a point to ignore her comment, "I'm about to introduce you to my new business associate. He's a bright guy with a good head on his shoulders and a keen sense for business."

Lolly only glared back, now out of equal parts confusion and rage. He had to be stalling for something. This was not the script as she'd written it, and it was throwing her off now. She'd have to improvise to make sure it ended with a fresh set of dark stains on the carpet...

"Please say hello," Dandy said with a flourish as a knock came to the office door and he immediately swung it wide to reveal his guest, "To my new sales team leader, Brian Cartwright!"

Standing in the doorway was the familiar, lanky frame of Niki's own former employee. He still had a bandage placed beneath his left eye where he'd been hit only days before, and he still walked with an awkward limp. It took a degree of control to hold back a prideful grin at her own handiwork.

"You wanted to see me?" Brian asked tenderly, glancing curiously at Lolly.

"Brian," Dandy said, gesturing over toward her. "I want you to meet the one and only Lollyhammer, who happens to be standing here in my own office, in the flesh!"

A bemused expression crossed his face, but was soon glazed over with his default plastic business smile as he extended a hand in greeting. "Hi, I'm Brian Cartwright, the new sales lead!"

"...what the hell is this?" she said, her fingers tingling.

Brian nervously looked back and forth between her and Dandy. "...uhm???"

"I hired him on the spot after you let him go," Dandy explained, matter-of-factly. "He had already proved so very instrumental in acquiring your upcoming butterscotch recipe, after all!"

Brian deflated as his brain caught up with the situation. "Wait...do you mean she's…?"

"And just this morning, the son of a gun managed to secure the remainder of your undamaged stock through inside contact with his own replacement!" Dandy added with a certain air of pride.

Niki could feel her teeth scraping against each other. She really wanted a chocolate bar. No, she NEEDED one. Right. Now.

"That's Niki Bracket in there?" Brian asked, his body suddenly locking up. "W-what is she doing here? And what...is she? Some kind of new mascot or something?"

Her fingers ached from clenching so tightly.

"She's Lollyhammer, that vigilante people talk about in the tabloids! The one who beats people in the head with a goddamn lollipop!" Dandy said, as if showing off a trophy. "And if I were you, I'd stick close to me, cause she looks like she's about to do just that to YOUR head right about now!"

Brian's eyes widened and he quickly sidestepped over beside his new boss. He couldn't stop staring at the ridiculous candy outfit, half out of sheer curiosity and half out of fear over whether or not using it would result in something even more violent than she had already demonstrated during their last encounter.

"You gonna tell me what's going on here or what?" Lolly finally said, taking a very noticeable degree of effort to restrain her urge to pounce.

"Yes, actually," Dandy continued, putting a hand on Brian's shoulder. "As I was saying, Brian's a very sensible businessman. He came up with a great plan that'll benefit all of us in this room, even going so far as to allow you to keep Knickknack Snacks alive."

Lolly shot her gaze over his way, eyeing him suspiciously. She remained tense, but remained in standby. "Talk."

Glancing away nervously, then taking a breath and putting on his best manufactured business grin, Brian began his sales pitch.

"Niki Bracket, I'm here to make you an offer."

"One I can't refuse?" she snarked.

"I certainly HOPE you won't refuse, ah, heh heh!" he chuckled, half-heartedly. "But anyway, let's get right to it. I want to extend my condolences for the loss of your factories. Losing major assets is a harsh loss, one people like us will usually never recover from…".

"But you and I stand in a unique position here," he continued, now operating entirely on the fumes of his own hollow professionalism. "Dandy Candy Corp already owns the rights to your butterscotch recipe, nearly all of your remaining stock, and now, your top sales associate. Given all that, I am advising...no, sorry, proposing...a corporate acquisition."

Niki frowned. "You want me to sell out? Just like you did?"

"You fired me," Brian reminded her. "So I hopped on board with Dandy, who was graciously willing to hire me on the spot based on the rapport we'd already built over my big sale. Now you, Miss Bracket, could follow my lead and still be able to save your company, your clout in the candy business, and your entire brand. You'd just need to sign with us at Dandy Candy, and you could get right back to making the candy I know you love."

"I'm not selling out to either of you dicks," she answered, standing up straight.

"Had a feeling you might say that," Brian said, applying his trademark condescending smile. "But honestly, if you still want to save the Knickknack Snacks brand, you really don't have much of a choice."

"Wonder why that is," she muttered.

"We've got something else here that may help persuade you as well," Dandy chimed in. "You see, I had my legal boys do a little extra homework on you recently, and they're quite good at getting those extra credit marks…".

"Niki," Brian said, far more confidently than he had been only a few minutes ago, "Your business hasn't been entirely legal over the years, has it?"

"...says the corporate drones who literally burned my facilities to ground."

"That, for starters," he replied, pointing at her. "You don't legally own those facilities, do you? You never purchased them, or leased them, and I doubt you even have the property deed for them."

She didn't answer.

"You also don't own a business license to conduct business in this area," Dandy added. "MY area. You swooped in on abandoned property, fixed it up a jiff, then started an entirely unauthorized competing industry on the same ground I've been working for decades. You stole business right out from under my nose!"

She still didn't answer.

"And finally, you don't even pay your employees fairly," Brian said, looking down on her. "You pay everyone minimum wage, with no benefits and no opportunity for merit increases. You're unfair, unlicensed, and completely undocumented. You know as well as I do that you can't do that and get away with it!"

Even still, she didn't answer.

"But listen, Niki," Dandy said, lowering his tone back down to earth level. "I respect your creativity. And I can clearly see the immense staying power of your brand. People really like the things you produce. And if you'd just sign on with my company, I'll give you the resources to build it all over again, and this time build it right. I think the Knickknack brand will really hit it off well with my existing customer base, and the resulting sales will justify the costs of getting you set up under my wing. We're open to compromise, Niki...if you are."

His words were met with a high-tension silence. The only sound came from the gentle brush of light wind blowing in through the shattered window behind her. Niki suspended the thought in the air for a moment, fingers still eagerly digging into the handle of her weapon. The idea certainly held a certain sparkle the way Brian described it. She'd be able to explore the magic of candy with far more resources and corporate backing like she'd always wanted to, if only at the cost of no longer making the rules and setting the precedents of her system. Her religion, as Candace might have put it. This was a decision best left to deep, soulful introspection. Perhaps more introspection than she had ever devoted to any other decision in her life.

She never had been much for soul-searching, though.

"No deal," she said flatly. "I'm not here to sell out. I'm not here to make my hundred grand, like you two. And if you think my 'brand' matters at all to me, then you're more deluded that I thought."

"Niki," Brian said, putting a hand to his forehead, "This arrogance of yours...this selfish righteousness...this is exactly why your company couldn't last...".

"IT COULDN'T LAST BECAUSE YOU BURNED IT TO THE GROUND!"

"I never confessed to that!" Dandy interjected sharply.

"And it's not just selfish arrogance," Niki said, channeling all the seething she'd done up to this point into her words. "I wanted to run my own company, my own way. My ideas are different than yours. You want to run the company, make a 'brand', sell the brand, become rich and successful, see how high you can get those numbers in your bank account. That's what you want."

"That's...kind of what ALL businesses want, Niki," Brian explained, gesturing toward her. "If you maximize your profit, you'll have more money to work with. To build further. To reward employees who work harder. To operate more efficiently."

"But that's all your end goal is," she continued, feeling the fire in her stomach spread out to the other parts of her body. "Be more productive, be more successful, make more money. I didn't want that. I founded my company on something entirely different: creating jobs and creating candy. And I planned to run it as I saw fit."

She counted on her fingers. "No wage gaps, no dress code, no discrimination. You show up, do the job, get paid, go home and repeat. If you don't like it, you leave the job. No 'two weeks notice', no 'vacation day cash-out', no 'non-disclosure agreements'."

"That last one sure worked out well," Dandy smirked.

"I made things so much simpler," she said, bringing her voice down low. "And you sharks couldn't stand that I was using a different system and making it work. I wasn't playing by your rules. So you took me out of the game, by force."

"To be fair, I did warn you about all of this, Niki," Brian said, a bit too smugly. "We could have avoided this if you'd just--GYERK!"  
He fell to the floor on his side as Niki steadied herself and hefted the spear back into place over her shoulder, breathing heavily. "God, I have wanted to do that for so long…".

"Brian!" Dandy shouted, dropping to one knee. "Are you alright? Brian? Hey, hello!"

Brian didn't respond. He'd hit the ground hard, glasses smashed and bent, and the bandage below his eye had fallen off and reopened the wound. This was all not to mention the massive bruise beneath his polo shirt, left by directly receiving the blunt face of the spear. Apparently Niki only knew how to wield a hammer, and Brian may have been lucky he hadn't been skewered instead. Whether he was bleeding internally or not, he certainly didn't seem to respond to being shaken and shouted at.

"Bastard finally got what was coming to him, I guess," Lolly said, running her tongue over her front teeth. "Maybe next time he should think twice before taking candy from a babe."

"That's it!" Dandy screamed, hopping to his feet. "Get out! Get out of my office right now! I'm calling every authority in the city, and they're gonna hunt you down and plaster your ass with so many lawsuits you'll walk with a limp for the rest of your life!"

"Yeah, about that," Lolly said, leaning on his desk as he strode over and snatched the phone off its hook. "Consider this the last time you'll ever see me."

"What do you mean?" he asked, furiously punching numbers.

"What do you think, smarty?" she snapped. "You wrecked my business, threatened my life, and burned me down to get me out of your life. So what's a girl to do then? The answer is easy. I'm getting out of your life!"

"Yes, patch me through to Steve in security." He glared back up at her. "I didn't want you to get out of my life, just out of my office! I can't believe you won't even accept a full job and a full pardon on everything, that's MORE than generous if you ask me!"

"Well I didn't ask you," Lolly replied. "And you didn't ask me either! You tried to force my hand! You're the one with ALL of the money and all of the power and all of the resources around here, and you don't want me hanging around, gumming up all your hard work. So you tried to strongarm me into buying your corporate bullshit, but you know what? I ain't buyin' it!"

"So…" she said, slamming her gauntlet hands on the table and pushing her wild-eyed face right up into his. "...I'll be taking my business elsewhere."

With that, she pushed away from him, spun herself around, and armed herself with what little remained of her hammer. With a quick flourish and a wild swing, she smashed it into his desk, cracking and splintering both in the process. She unceremoniously dropped the candy cane on the floor, crushed a shard of peppermint beneath her boot, and ground it into the plush carpet, sharply keeping an eye on Dandy all the while. With one final rude gesture to both him and the still unconscious (and very possibly un-living) Brian, she sashayed back over to the window and took a flying leap out and up. Dandy could hear the clacking sound of her boots fade away as she scaled her way up the outside of the building and off into the distance.

And she was right. He never saw her again.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Did someone else get here first?" the man said, scratching his head as he pointed to the smoking wreck up ahead. Melted frames and shattered wood beams surrounded a blackened crater full of hot ashes, laced with puffy billows of smoke around the edges.

His partner slowed their approach. "Looks like it?" she said, parking out in front of the wreckage. "This HAS to be the place."

"This is definitely the address that lady gave us. I don't see anyone around though?"

"The neighbors must all be at work or something," she said, stepping out to have a closer look at the remnants of the house. "Man, this is weird."

"What is?"

"Look how only this middle part got burned down," she said, pointing to the two larger buildings on either side. "It's like somebody got pissed and set fire to the utility shed or something."

"Huh, yeah…" he said. "Think I saw that on a tv show once, where a kid was pissed about some family shit and set fire to the shed."

"This ain't a tv show," she replied, kicking dust and ash over the embers. "This thing burnt down, and...amazingly neither of the other two houses were touched at all. This is some kinda crazy hand of god shit right here."

"Or someone else got here first and contained it, like I already said."

"Eh, doesn't matter anyway," she said, pulling out a chunk of charred door frame. "What DOES matter is that nobody seems to have gotten hurt."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Imagine if that fumigation lady we saw on the way had been around here. THAT would have been a disaster…".

"Yeah…".

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"Alright, go go go!" she shouted, slamming the car door behind her.

And the car did exactly that. Lollyhamma removed her helmet, possibly for the last time, and tossed it in the back seat, catching her breath as Minnie pulled out onto the freeway, heading north.

"Welcome back, Miss Niki," Minnie said, keeping her eyes on the road. "I trust you've made your peace?"

Niki sighed, oozing down in her seat as she caught up with normal breathing. "I've finished all that needs to be finished here. Thanks for waiting."

"Always my pleasure."

"Minnie, you say that like it's no big deal at all," she continued, shaking her head. "I don't think I'll ever understand how you can be put through all this bullshit, literally lose your home and everything in it, and still be willing to drive me around like a damn chauffeur."

"It's just my personal method," Minnie replied, not taking her eyes off the road. "I do the work in front of me before moving on, leaving anything irrelevant off to the side. It's how I've managed to live so efficiently."

"I still don't understand that," Niki said, unclasping her boots. "And I guess it's not my job to understand it. But I still don't think YOU'LL ever understand how much that means to me. How much YOU mean to me…".

"Believe me or not, Miss Niki, I DO understand. You've made it very clear just how deeply you depend on me and appreciate my unwavering loyalty."

"Unwavering loyalty?" she said, arching her back to shimmy the cupcake skirt down her legs. "Minnie, you're nothing less than a goddamn saint. You've done an ungodly amount of personal bullshit for me, and I'm probably gonna spend the remainder of my life in your debt."

"You don't need to think of it that way, Miss Niki," she replied, a certain warmness peering out from behind the usual iron-clad calm. "I'm tempted to say I would more or less do anything for you, after all we've already survived together."

Niki paused in the middle of unstrapping her body armor. "...anything?" she asked, in the grave tones of someone looking for help in covering up a murder.

"You sound as though you're looking for help in covering up a murder," came the reply. "...are you?"

Niki took a breath and opened her mouth to speak, stuttered, then settled on, "...well, anyway. Let me just tell you what I'd like to do next."

She struggled to free herself from the candy corset as she spoke. "I can't live here anymore. I need to move on and move away, get out of this town where all the big players want me gone. Hell, they may even want me dead, now. It's not safe here. So I'm gonna do the smart thing and just like I told Dandy face-to-face, I'm gonna take my business elsewhere."

Minnie waited a moment before interjecting. "You intend to take Knickknack Snacks elsewhere?"

"Well, not under that name," she answered with a sigh. "There's gonna be a big fiasco going on back here, and starting up another Knickknack Snacks in another town will just make the cake fall before it's done baking."

"Your foresight is very keen today, Miss Niki."

"Not as keen as yours," she said, looking down at the floor, gauntlets still secured. "That's why, when I skip this town and start fresh somewhere else...I really want you to come with me."

Minnie clicked the turn signal, but didn't answer.

"It's funny," Niki continued, rubbing her wrists as she pulled the gauntlets off. "I guess Candace was right about a few things after all. Remember when she was talking about the whole phoenix from the ashes thing? Reminded me of that one science thing we learned back in middle school. You know, the one where matter is never created or destroyed?"

"Conservation of Mass?"

"Yeah, that one...she said things are never created or destroyed, they just turn into other things. I think she meant that even though my warehouse and your house got turned into ashes, that can probably be turned into like, fertilizer or something. And it also means I could transform my business into something totally new as well…".

"Still sounds like business as usual, if you ask me," Minnie said, pulling off the freeway on to a less-populated highway. "You'd be able to continue your efforts to undermine the system, as you've explained to me before."

"Damn right I will," Niki replied, her tone stronger now. "I don't know what asshole decided capitalism was the only way to conduct a business, but I've seen what it does to people, and let me tell you, I am cleaning those crumbs right out of the toaster! I've got my own way of doing things, and you can bet your sweet ass that's how I'm gonna do 'em!"

"Once again I feel compelled to express my admiration of your unbreakable spirit, Miss Niki," Minnie said, turning on cruise control. "That, in equal measure with your visionary ideals and philosophies, is why I fully intend to stick with you in your future endeavors."

Niki's face brightened up. "You'll really do it? You'll really give up the little life you built up back there and come start a brand new life at a brand new company with me?"

"Lying is not something I've ever made a habit of," she answered. "Especially not to my boss."

"Come on now, Minnie, you don't have to talk to me like I'm your boss," Niki said, jabbing her with an elbow. "In fact, as your boss, I hereby grant you full permission to talk to me in whatever manner you so please, because I'm just so damn happy you said yes that I could kiss your gorgeous red velvet face!"

"I'm going to end up burying that face in my hands and running us off the road if you flatter me any more," she said, grateful that the tone of her skin provided such excellent camouflage for blushing. "You sound as though I've just accepted your marriage proposal."

"Well excuse me for making references to physical affection then!" Niki said with a laugh.

"...can you perhaps do one favor for me, in return?" Minnie asked after a moment's silence.

"Of course, babe! Just name it."

"Would you reach into that compartment and hand me the small book you'll find inside?"

Niki popped it open and pulled a small bound book from the neatly assorted arsenal of tools inside. "This little thing?"

"That's the one, thank you," Minnie said, keeping her eyes on the road as she automatically cracked it open to a certain dogeared page and carefully added two more tally marks in a long list of them.

"What's that for?" Niki asked, craning to see.

Minnie quickly shut it and pulled it away, then after another moment's hesitation opened it back up. "...since we're starting fresh, perhaps I'll explain this now. This ledger is an ongoing record of every single instance in which you've made reference to kissing me. As you can see, this has not exactly been an uncommon occurrence with you."

Niki pitched back in her seat, laughing. "Oh my god, do I really say it that often? I wasn't even aware you were paying attention!"

"Clearly not, Miss Niki, as you've yet to actually touch your lips to me at all."

"Oh…well then," Niki said with a grin, "I guess I'd better start showing all of my appreciation for you instead of just telling you, eh? Seems I've got a lot of tally marks to make up for!"

Minnie opened her mouth to deliver a clever, sarcastic retort, but found her words cut short when Niki leaned over and pulled her in for a long kiss. She inhaled sharply and automatically reached out to turn off cruise control, slow the car down, and pull off to the side of the road.

As Niki pulled away, and her breath slowly returned to normal, she turned to look her in the eye. "...I was...not expecting you to go right for the lips."

"...should I not have?" Niki asked, raising an eyebrow.

Minnie shook her head. "I couldn't have scripted a better outcome, honestly...but I may need a moment to compose myself first if you plan on doing that again."

"Well, it sure is a long highway," Niki said, gesturing to the road ahead. "And we don't exactly have a destination to get to yet, so I might very well do it again!"

Minnie smiled and put the car into gear again, pulling back onto the highway. Breaking away from routine somehow seemed wrong and counter-productive to her usual methods of logic and efficiency. But even she couldn't deny that the freedom of an open road into a new adventure had a certain exciting allure to it. And she knew for certain that with Niki at her side, the whole thing would undoubtedly be an adventure worth taking.

"So, for this new business," Niki said, watching out the window as the midday sun climbed to its daily zenith overhead, "I'm thinking coffee creamer. I can't believe it's something I'd never given much thought to before. Imagine all the crazy things I can already do with frostings, then apply that to creamer?! What a concept!"

And so, as Candace had blathered on about before, Knickknack Snacks would turn out to be something not destroyed, but only temporarily moved to a transitional state, on a bright and shining path toward its next evolution. Those same philosophies would prove to come true again and again for Niki and Minnie, unusual and obtuse as they may have been. Many other notable things probably happened to these characters, but they are all part of different stories. This particular story ends here.

Someone probably burned the manuscript containing the other stories…


End file.
